We’re already familiar with Sally Mann’s fascination with trauma, the fragility of life, and anything related to death. Since the beginning of her career, Mann has always turned her gaze toward others: her husband Larry, her children Emmett, Jessie and Virginia, and nameless bodies in various states of decomposition.
For Upon Reflection, her latest exhibition, Mann has taken herself as her subject. In 2006, Mann suffered an accident while horseback riding in the mountains and spent months recovering. She describes the incident as both psychologically and physically traumatic. Over the course of a year, she took more than 200 self-portraits—mainly of her face and torso—as a kind of art therapy. The high-contrast black and white images are true to her style, between abstraction and sculptural forms, and executed with great finesse. She employs the old-fashioned wet collodion process, in which the photographs are developed under glass plates. Although some of these portraits were already included in Mann’s last work, The Flesh and The Spirit, their exhibition at the Edwynn Houk Gallery is of great interest for their subtlety and intrigue.
Jonas Cuénin
Sally Mann, Upon Reflection
September 13 – November 3, 2012
Edwynn Houk Gallery
745 5th Avenue #407
New York, NY 10151
USA
(212) 750-7070
