Art:21 | Sally Mann

Sally Mann's early "Immediate Family" photographs were of her three children and husband. In her more recent series of landscapes of the deep South, Mann uses damaged lenses to make images marked by the scratches, light leaks, and shifts in focus that were part of the photographic process as it developed during the 19th century.

Sally Mann is featured in the Season 1 episode "Place" of the Art21 series "Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century".

Learn more about Sally Mann: http://www.art21.org/artists/sally-mann

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[booku2]

she is SALLY MANN, im sure she knows about lens caps and what she was doing...

[catsnake7]

she's awesome!

[soooimLia]

@booku2 The lens cap in this case is the shutter. At the time that camera was made there was no such thing as a automated shutter. You would place a cap over the lens when you wanted to finish exposing the image.

[InTheNuts]

Richard Benson, a photographer, maker of books and darkroom printer for Paul Strand and Walker Evans, said it best:

"I sometimes go so far as to say that no great black and white photograph was made with a light meter, unless it was being used to hold up the sagging bellows of an old view camera."

All the best work is by the seat of the pants, forehead against the camera, hand over the lens!

The quote is from his book The Printed Picture, published by MoMA in 2008.

[callmeBe]

@AlfieJapanorama Oh, thank you for that considered point!

[AlfieJapanorama]

@callmeBe True, but Weston used film that was a lot more off the shelf than Mann is using here. She is making her own sensitized plates. I used to make a lot of emulsions myself. It tended to be that you got to experimenting with exposure time rather than metering. Because, metering relies upon knowing the ISO.... and with making your own light-sensitive plates, emulsions etc.... that's usually the one thing you have no accurate picture of.

[callmeBe]

@AlfieJapanorama I won't disagree, but Edward Weston always metered (famous story about that Ansel use to tell), and then would add to that his observations and then take the exposure. When you drag one of these damn 15 lb cameras up a hill with your wooden tripod, film holders, maybe a brass lens or two, etc, you want one shot to do it right, you don't have extra film to bracket--and for me, just to check my judgement, I always meter and then use experience to make the necessary changes.

[AlfieJapanorama]

@jasam123 Dude, when you are good and you shoot all the time, your eyes and your brain are your meter. Don't be so facetious.

[canturgan]

I really learned a lot from that video, it takes a 30 second exposure if you find yourself lumbered with a 19th century plate camera. Sports photographers take note.

[davidmartinsvideos]

She's so cool

[jasam123]

wtf, what she's pretending she doesn't have cash for a external meter ?

blah

[AdiPAINTINGS]

nice art work and choice of subjects