Research - Sally Mann Images

Sally Mann

I have decided to research Sally Mann for this family assignment, i have researched her for many other assignments before as i really love her work.

Sally Mann is an American photographer who is probably best known for her large black and white photographs of her young children. The series is called "Immediate Family". This book contains 65 black and white images of her three children all under the age of ten. Many photographs were taken at the familys remote summer cabin by the river where the kids would play and swim in the river and have a great time.
The set of photographs explores typical childhood "Family" themes and moments, for example.. dressing up, having a nap, playing different games, reading and general funny moments that take place when you are a child. Also through these images though darker issues are also explores such as.. insecurity, lonliness, injuries, sexuality and even death is explored to some degree.
The controversy of these images was very intense because some people did not agree with certain message that the photographs were displaying through the young children. However, i think that she simply recorded spontaneous and carefree moments within childhood.

I really love Sally Mann's work i research her a lot of times for assignments and i never get bored of looking at and talking about her work, theres something about the photographs that are really moving and capture the essence of the place and time so well, i think they will stand the test of time and people will still be talking about them in years to come because they are simply beautiful images.

Initial Ideas

I have decided that for this assignment im going to stay close to home and photograph my family in my family home and going about there normal day to day business. I am also going to include my dog in the images as he is apart of my family just as much as everyone else is.

An idea i have had is photographing my family on a "saturday", every saturday my family all gathers together at my grandma's house and just chats and has some tea and watches television, all very normal, but this happens everyday and i just want to capture what goes on and take a back seat and look from afar at what goes on during "saturdays".

Another idea i have is just to photograph my mum and dad around the house and with the dog, just general family shots really. I will develop these ideas more after doing some research.

Introduction

For this assigment we have been asked to take photographs of our close family and explore what goes on in day to day life etc. We are asked to investigate the world of our family and by doing so have been given these words which we can respond to:

- INTRUDE
-AGE
-REVEALING
-VOYEURISM
-CHILD
-PRIVACY
-SOCIAL
-CLASS
-CULTURE

We have been asked to research and analyse the work of one photographer of our choice and experiment and evaluate our own images.

My Final Image

This is my final image, im really pleased with the overall look of my shot, it took a while to get it just right with the lighting and everything seens as i had not had a go at taking photographs at night before, but it was well worth it!

I decided that for my final image i would use a shot where you could still tell that it was a bell but half of it was smashed. I think this works well as people will still wonder what it is, but it wont be too hard for them to tell when they look at it for a few seconds.

Overall im happy with this image and may use it in my portfolio.

Some of my Images

Conclusion

After researching Picasso i decided to go with the idea of photographing at night, i bought my bell that i was going to smash from a charity shop and i was then ready to have some fun and smash away!! I went out after it has been dark for a few hours and i smashed the glass bit by bit and took photographs of this whilst i was doing it. I enjoyed doing this assignment and would like to try some more night photography in the future as it's very different to shooting in the day. I am very happy with the overall affect that i have created with my image by shooting it at night under a street lamp and using the Tungsten setting on my camera to get the lighting correct and so that it was not too dark.

I'm definately doing to try more night photography!!! I am very happy and would not do anything differently if i was to do this same assignment again.