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Sally Mann

Proud Flesh

September 15–October 31, 2009
980 Madison Avenue, New York

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh

Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh

Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh

Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh

Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh

Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh

Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh

Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh

Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh Installation view

Sally Mann: Proud Flesh

Installation view

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Works Exhibited

Sally Mann, The Quality of the Affection, 2006 Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, The Quality of the Affection, 2006

Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Kingfisher's Wing, 2007 Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Kingfisher's Wing, 2007

Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Hephaestus, 2008 Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Hephaestus, 2008

Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Memory's Truth, 2008 Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Memory's Truth, 2008

Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Ponder Heart, 2009 Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Ponder Heart, 2009

Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Was Ever Love, 2009 Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Was Ever Love, 2009

Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Somnambulist, 2009 Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

Sally Mann, Somnambulist, 2009

Gelatin silver print, 15 × 13 ½ inches (38.1 × 34.3 cm), edition of 5

About

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present "Proud Flesh", a series of new photographs by Sally Mann.

Children, landscape, lovers—these iconic subjects are as common to the photographic lexicon as light itself. But Mann's take on them, rendered through processes both traditional and esoteric, is anything but common. From the outset of her career she has consistently challenged the viewer, rendering everyday experiences at once sublime and deeply disquieting.

In previous projects, Mann has explored the relationships between parent and child, brother and sister, human and nature, site and history. Her latest photographic study of her husband Larry Mann, taken over six years, has resulted in a series of candid nude studies of a mature male body that neither objectifies nor celebrates the focus of its gaze. Rather it suggests a profoundly trusting relationship between woman and man, artist and model that has produced a full range of impressions – erotic, brutally frank, disarmingly tender, and more. While the relation of artist and model is, traditionally, a male-dominated field that has yielded countless appraisals of the female body and psyche, Mann reverses the role by turning the camera on her husband during some of his most vulnerable moments.

Mann's technical methods and process further emphasize the emotional and temporal aspects of these fragile life studies. The images are contact prints made from wet-plate collodion negatives, produced by coating a sheet of glass with ether-based collodion and submerging it in silver nitrate. Mann exploits the surface aberrations that can result from the unpredictability of the process to produce painterly photographs marked by stark contrasts of light and dark, with areas that resemble scar tissue. In works such as Hephaestus and Ponder Heart, the scratches and marks incurred in the production process become inseparable from the physical reality of Larry's body.

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Elisa Gonzalez and Terrance Hayes

to light, and then return—: A Night of Poetry with Edmund de Waal, Elisa Gonzalez, Terrance Hayes, and Sally Mann

Gagosian presented an evening of poetry inside to light, and then return—, an exhibition of new works by Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann, inspired by each other’s practices, at Gagosian, New York. In this video—taking the artists’ shared love of poetry, fragments, and metamorphosis as a point of departure—poets Elisa Gonzalez and Terrance Hayes read a selection of their recent works that resonate with the themes of elegy and historical reckoning in the show. The evening was moderated by Jonathan Galassi, chairman and executive editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Five white objects lined up on a white shelf

to light, and then return—Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann

This fall, artists and friends Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann will exhibit new works together in New York. Inspired by their shared love of poetry, fragments, and metamorphosis, the works included will form a dialogue between their respective practices. Here they meet to speak about the origins and developments of the project.

Roe Ethridge's Two Kittens with Yarn Ball (2017–22) on the cover of Gagosian Quarterly, Spring 2023

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2023

The Spring 2023 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Roe Ethridge’s Two Kittens with Yarn Ball (2017–22) on its cover.

Sally Mann and Benjamin Moser

Sally Mann and Benjamin Moser

During the 2022 edition of Paris Photo, Sally Mann and Benjamin Moser sat down for an intimate conversation as the first event in Gagosian’s Paris Salon series, initiated by Jessie Fortune Ryan. In light of Moser’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Susan Sontag, Sontag: Her Life and Work (2019), recently translated into French, the two discussed the power and responsibility tied up in their respective practices of photography and writing.

Still from "Sally Mann: Vinculum".

Sally Mann: Vinculum

Join Sally Mann at her studio in Lexington, Virginia. Filmed at work in her darkroom and within the surrounding landscape, she discusses her exploratory approach to making and printing pictures, what draws her to the landscape of the American South, and her newest body of work, Vinculum.

Sally Mann and Edmund de Waal at the Frick Collection, New York, November 8, 2019.

In Conversation
Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann

Sally Mann joins Edmund de Waal onstage at the Frick Collection in New York to converse about art, writing, and the importance of place in their respective bodies of work. 

News

Photo: © Annie Leibovitz

Artist Spotlight

Sally Mann

November 17–23, 2021

Sally Mann is known for her photographs of intimate and familiar subjects rendered both sublime and disquieting. Her projects explore the complexities of familial relationships, social realities, and the passage of time, capturing tensions between nature, history, and memory. Central to Mann’s investigation are the landscapes that she has photographed both near her home in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and across the South for over three decades. Often using a view camera, Mann draws on the history of both her medium and the Southern landscape to produce photographs that are expressive and elegiac.

Photo: © Annie Leibovitz