6 of 11 7 of 11 Sally Mann Kim Rushing Show More Show Less 8 of 11 Sally Mann’s photograph of the site in Mississippi of Emmett Till’s death in 1955. From 'Hold Still' Show More Show Less. Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann (Little, Brown and Company, 2016) Reviewed by Palmer Smith. Hold Still by Sally Mann tells the story of a famous and controversial photographer’s personal history whilst digging into the sleepy culture of the American South.

Sally Mann
Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs
New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015
496 pages, hardcover: $27.99 CDN

In Hold Still, Sally Mann discloses that the month she was conceived, her father—a doctor but also an art collector and connoisseur—wrote of his hope for someone in the next generation to be artistic. With characteristic wryness, Mann questions whether he thought she fit the bill, based on his labelling of a file of her childhood drawings as “Sally’s ‘Art.’” Nonetheless, he sent her to boarding school with a Leica camera, and the rest is history.

Mann became a household name (albeit one that has often been half-remembered and half-botched) with Aperture’s 1992 release of the monograph, Immediate Family, whose first printing sold out in three months. It features portraits of Mann’s children doing childlike things, and they just so happen to be nude in about a quarter of the images. Living on a 425-acre farm in Lexington, Virginia, the Mann family enjoyed a rare degree of privacy, which became compromised by the fallout of this controversy. These legitimately artistic photographs were interpreted by some people as perverted, even attracting a stalker. One art critic dismissed her work with the loaded term ‘Degenerate,’ which is linked closely with the Nazis’ disdain for modern art.

I’m not entirely convinced by Mann’s stance that an artist’s morality has no place in the assessment of work. The reason is that her multiple arguments of defence seem to implicate her by underscoring the very need to defend herself. She distinguishes between nudity and sexuality; lists the maternal acts that qualify her as a good mother; and demonstrates the agency of her children. (For example, they were invited to veto images in Immediate Family.) Given what she’s endured, though, the degree of coverage of her side of the story is understandable. It does not overpower Hold Still, even though it has been dominating media coverage of the book. (Admittedly, I am perpetuating this approach).

Mann provides autobiographical context for the controversy—from her childhood spent largely without clothing in a “near-feral” state, to her first exploration of nude photography (of classmates in the woods) that almost got her kicked out of boarding school. It was there that she transitioned from an aimless teen to a young adult with ambition, after realizing her charm was no longer enough to attract men. She married Larry Mann when she was 18, prompting his disgraced upper class parents to cut him out their will in secret. She was consumed by child-rearing, and it wasn’t until their third child was born that she embraced them as subject matter. She began to realize that photography wasn’t something to be fit around family; rather, it was easily integrated with it. Genre scenes of activities like swimming and eating became her staple.

Mann insists that she is “a regular person making ordinary art,” yet the CV on her website is a whopping 44 pages. Her memoir opens with her sorting through boxes of personal papers in preparation for the delivery of the Massey lectures at Harvard, which is hardly a run-of-the-mill opportunity. To her credit, she exploits the ordinary in this situation by allowing the reader to witness her anxiety. She is admirably transparent throughout Hold Still. For example, the reader is privy to her working process. She includes her first contact sheet; reveals technical glitches like vinegar syndrome that cracked her early negatives; shows multiple shots of the same scene while explaining what she tried to correct in each version; and contrasts a spontaneous photograph to a planned version of the same scene. Evaluations of her work like ‘loser’ and “little honey of a photo” reveal the difficulties and rewards of being an artist.

After photographing her children for ten years, Mann continued to push herself. She still prints all her own work, and she has tackled difficult subject matter: her husband’s muscular dystrophy; decomposing human bodies in The Body Farm, a forensics research facility in Tennessee; and black male bodies as an exploration of complex race relations in the South. The latter theme is also explored in writing, by reminiscing about her childhood African-American caretaker, Gee-Gee.

In her photographs, Mann has laid bare her family but, in her writing, she holds them fairly close. She explores painful memories about deceased family members, such as the murder-suicide of her in-laws, prompted presumably by the pressure to keep up with the Joneses, and her father’s ingestion of pills to speed up his otherwise natural death. Very little is said about conflicts with the living, however. Minimal mention is made of her brothers, possibly because there was a dispute over the family farm on which she lived. Maybe I’m a sucker for romance, but I found myself wanting to know more about her relationship with Larry. For instance, what drew them together besides the burliness she witnessed when her then-boyfriend brought him to the farm to move a huge rock? She does identify the genesis of their strong bond as a year-long trip as newlyweds to Europe on a tight budget, but this one-page description of living on love and art is a mere segue to a 14-page entry on her father’s European sojourn.

The usual suspects from archives are plumbed, like letters and diary entries. In addition, there are unexpected and delightful inclusions, such as accounting book excerpts and horse-riding ribbons. Mann demonstrates the power of photographs in constructing a story, continuing captions from one to the next so that they form a mini-narrative of their own instead of being isolated like usual.

On more than one occasion, Mann highlights that the act of writing her memoir makes her vulnerable. Even so, reading it doesn’t feel intrusive because she articulates her enjoyment of writing. Her style is grounded yet eloquent, evidence of her Masters in creative writing. It’s no wonder she was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Awards.

Heather Saunders is an artist based in North Bay, Ontario. She has worked at commercial, artist-run, campus, and public galleries, and is
a former publisher of FUSE magazine. Currently, she is an adjunct professor in the Department of Fine & Performing Arts at Nipissing University, where she also works as a library manager.She is the author of the blog Artist in Transit.

Sally Mann Controversy

Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann
(Little, Brown and Company, 2016)

Reviewed by Palmer Smith

HoldStill by Sally Mann tells the story of a famous and controversial photographer’s personal history whilst digging into the sleepy culture of the American South. Mann’s ability to write her memoir with such honesty surrounding the connections between her past, present, and future is certainly admirable. The writing is poignant and beautiful, and reminds me very much of my experiences in the South. The stories are written with such emotional depth, and the photographs in the memoir contribute to this emotional intensity. Themes include the artistic process, rebellion, fame, family and controversy. The book is split into four sections categorized in the following order: 1) stories of her childhood in rural Virginia, 2) memories of her mother, 3) her observations of racial injustice in the South and 4) memories of her father.

The beginning of the memoir places us in Mann’s hometown of Lexington, Virginia. She writes, “I grew up into the person I am today, for better or worse, on those lifeless summer afternoons having doggy adventures that took me far from home, where no one had looked for me or missed me in the least” (19). This upbringing influenced her photography, as she was able to spend so much time alone in nature. She describes herself as being a rebellious teenager, always having a boyfriend and always staying out late. She writes of Lexington with loving affection but also admits that it was an isolated place, split up by class and deeply rooted in racism.

At boarding school, Mann took her first photography class and began to discover what she calls the “thrill” of seeing the negative in front of her (36). She explains that the artistic process is worth it because one has experienced the joy of making something. I believe that the process of writing for Mann is similar to photography—she knows that all of these moments in her life will pass, but she still has her stories here, in someone’s grasp, and that she has created something through experiencing her life.

The photograph “Deep South, Untitled (Scarred Tree),” which is featured in the book, was taken on a road trip Mann took on her own, going through Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. It is apparent that the sleepiness of the South is depicted in this moment. The tree looks like it has been cut at one point, giving the photograph a sense of damage. The tree appears to be old, and because no person is in the photograph, the tree becomes our main focus. Mann’s talent is apparent in each photograph she includes in the book.

The setting of this memoir is essential because it relates to both Mann’s work and her memories. The South becomes a character itself, and she analyzes its significance by describing the feeling of nostalgia permeating the region. She writes, “I believe we in the South have a different sense of time and its exigencies” (81). Mann is able to explain to the reader in a precise manner how time moves differently in the South compared to other parts of the country. She goes on to directly quote British historian John Keegan, who wrote, “The thing about the South is that it retains for Europeans . . . a lingering aftermath of defeat . . . Pain is a dimension of old civilizations. The South has it. The rest of the United States does not” (81-82). Mann manifests this nostalgia through her photographs, which are often captured in the South. Mann acknowledges that the pain of generations of Blacks who were treated so terribly remains today. The contradiction is that, even in this awful history, the scenery of the South is stunning and haunting, which makes writing about it and photographing it that much more difficult and strange.

Mann’s career began in the 1970s, but evolved in the ’80s and ’90s, as photographing her children brought controversy around her work. Mann defends her reasoning behind taking controversial photographs of her kids by stating she took most of them when the children were simply playing naked on their farm. Commentary about photos of her young daughter Virginia was written in The New York Times, which stated, “‘Fallen Child’ is beneath contempt as it uses and manipulates and distorts this poor child for no apparent artistic reason” (150). Another Times writer stated, “Mann seems obsessed with situations which may prove disturbing to her children in a few years . . . Time will tell whether and how much her children have been emotionally damaged by her photographs” (139). The nudity, she explains, is really showing the state of being a child. She does not intend for it to be sexual. However, many people argue that Mann’s photographs were not appropriate to publish. I understand both sides of the argument, but I tend to agree with Mann, because I see the photographs as artwork, not sexual material.

Sally Mann has established herself as both a talented photographer and a talented writer in this memoir. She is vulnerable in her writing, and her vulnerability is what makes this memoir so achingly beautiful and compelling. In discovering her beliefs on photography, we also discover her beliefs on writing, and both art forms (when told by her) are honest. This is what makes her art timeless and fantastic.

Sally Mann Books

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