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SON: Growing up as a child

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of Sally Mann was not easy at all.

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Anyone who's as driven as Sally Mann is

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is going to be an intense mother.

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She's difficult,

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and for as much as I get annoyed

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and struggle against it and fight it,

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I love it at the same time,

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so it's such a Yin and a Yang.

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MANN: God, it does look like the Shroud of Turin

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or something.

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It looks so ponderous –

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whereas this looks so ephemeral.

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God, they're just two different pictures.

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Some pictures just have to be a certain way,

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but this doesn't seem to cry 
out to be either light or dark.

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Which just makes my job harder, actually.

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WOMAN:: Every time she looks at something,

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she's looking at it as an artist.

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It's so much of her energy.

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And so I think we lost, to some extent, a mother,

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but we gained a friend, 
and an artistic accomplice,

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and something entirely different.

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MAN: it's a tremendous effort that goes into it.

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Sally will have a pile of, what 
I think are beautiful prints,

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and those are the rejects,

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and I'm sitting here going, god.

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This is a tough one.

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What I like about these dog 
bones is their ambiguity.

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It takes you a while to figure out what they are,

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or maybe you don't figure it out.

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If it doesn't have ambiguity, 
don't bother to take it.

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I mean, I love that, that aspect of photography,

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the mendacity of photography.

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It's got to have some kind of peculiarity in it

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or it's not interesting to me.

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–Do right.

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–Just stay there.

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If I could be said to have any kind of aesthetic,

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it's sort of a magpie aesthetic, you know.

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I just go around and I pick up whatever's around.

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It's very spontaneous.

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I see a dog bone, I bring it in,

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I take a picture, I like the picture.

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I took, well, hey, that's a pretty good picture,

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so then I go collect all the other dog bones

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and I bring them in and I 
take a few more pictures,

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and then I put them on the wall,

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And then before long, the gallery says,

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"Well, let's do a show of dog bones."

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So we do a show of dog bones,

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and then some, like, cynical post-modern critic

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will come along and say,

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"Oh, my god, look at the show of dog bones,

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what do you suppose it means?"

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And that's, ohh! That's a 
good dog. Sure, go get it.

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These dog bones are just making art

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the way art should be made, I think,

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without any overarching reference.

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Just for fun, if you can imagine that,

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art for fun, sometimes it is fun.

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There's a lot of dispute about 
the proper way to hold this glass.

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I learned how to do this from a master,

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he's just a genius teacher,

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and he really knows wet plate collodion.

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his name's Mark Osterman.

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It's a sort of cranky process.

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It doesn't allow for much sloppy technique.

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It's hard to get these chemicals.

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They're all, you know, controlled.

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Collodion and ether, and of course, grain alcohol

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you can get, but you can't get it in virginia.

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Then you take it to the silver nitrate.

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–Whoa, there's a bug in here.

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And for reasons that escape me completely,

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the silver nitrate sticks to the 
collodion and ether and coats it.

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My plates are horribly flawed.

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but, of course, it's the flaws I like,

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so you pray.

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In your prayer, you pray,

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please don't let me screw 
it up, but just screw it up

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a little bit, just enough to make it interesting.

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It's so stupid – I have to use 
one hand to hold my shutter shut,

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I have to use a head to 
keep the camera from moving.

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There's got to be an easier way.

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All right, well, what do you think?

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30 seconds, I'd say.

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Actually, I'm surprised it took me 
this long to get to this process.

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Because I was so immersed in that whole 
glass plate, 19th-century aesthetic.

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–I like that one, there's 
Jenna being the weirdo again.

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–Sally: Oh, without the splinter?

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–Daughter: she's so normal-looking 
now, no one would know that she was...

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She was just beautiful, 
and she looked like someone

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that stepped out of the wrong century.

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–Yeah, great little model, though.

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–Daughter: The most incredible little girl.

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–Sally: She could put on a 
pout like nobody's business.

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–Daughter: She could throw a 
fit like nobody's business.

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–Sally: Well, that's true, too.

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The way I approach photography, 
it's very spontaneous.

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The children were there,

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so I took pictures of my children.

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It's not that I'm interested 
in children that much,

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or photographing them, it's 
just that they were there.

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Daughter: She would call 
us her models, but usually

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it was just something where she'd say "Freeze,"

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and we'd stop what we were doing.

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Sometimes she'd make some small alteration,

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but that was all.

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The one where my hair is on my ribs,

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I remember that I had to keep going back

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and wetting my hair,

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because it would dry and then slip, so...

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that's the only thing that I remember.

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–Sally: do you remember how

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many times we took that picture?
–Daughter: Yes, we… I remember.

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–Sally: That was a production, because 
someone had to sit behind you in the river

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and thwack the river with the canoe

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to make those little ripples that are behind you.

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–Man: that's what I was doing.

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–Sally: yeah, you were thwacking the river,

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and she was standing there keeping her hair

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from falling off her ribs.

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And still maintaining a beatific expression.

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That was a really hard picture to take.

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I wanted those family pictures to look effortless.

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I wanted them to look like snapshots.

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There is something about 
the whole 8 x 10 business.

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The sort of reverence that goes along with it,

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that you have to, you have to pay your dues

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to the photo gods, I guess.

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Son: You know, my mother's vision,

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she had an idea, it was almost like a dream.

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I think she has a dream picture,

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and she just gradually, like, refines it

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until it's exactly what she's looking for.

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It took like five separate trips out here,

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and taking, probably, looked 
like 15 to 20 pictures

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every single time.

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She was looking, every time 
she took a picture of me,

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I knew she was looking for that

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intensity that I feel my sisters and I have,

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My mother has –

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it's just like this intensity, Mann intensity,

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I don't know what it is, 
it plagues me to this day.

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Sally: it was my father who gave me

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almost all my cameras, the 
first half-dozen, I guess.

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He was an atheist who practiced

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compassionate medicine, 60 hours a week.

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He was enough of a socialist to believe

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you shouldn't have to pay for it if you couldn't.

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But he was also an art collector,

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I mean, he bought Kandinsky in the '30s,

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and Twombly in the '50s.

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And he was quite an unusual 
man, and hell to live up to.

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But then, of course, my mother...

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in all different kinds of poses here.

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You couldn't have two more disparate backgrounds.

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My mother with this, like, blue-blood New England,

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and my father sort of a renegade Texan.

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But I was the third child.

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Two older brothers.

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And I sort of think by the time I came along,

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everyone was tired of raising children.

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It wasn't that they neglected me,

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it was a benign neglect, I guess.

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I know I never wore clothes.

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They're all, every picture of me is naked.

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And they had 12 boxers, so I was always

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surrounded by a pack of dogs.

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I just ran wild for the first 
seven years of my life –

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and then went to school,

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and didn't take to it too kindly,

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but I was eventually civilized.

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I guess that's a little how I raised my own kids.

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And a little why I was so nonplussed

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when people were so surprised

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to see the pictures of my children without shirts

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and pants, and running wild, too.

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It seemed like a perfectly 
normal thing to do, to me.

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Daughter: I don't think I've 
ever seen this one before.

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00:10:04,560 --> 00:10:06,680
See, that's an example, 
you see your hand in there?

183
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You see how your gesture is?

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You didn't have that clunky child thing.

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You were so svelte and sylph-like.

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Daughter: Everyone looks at these pictures,

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and it's like, you must have 
had the most amazing childhood.

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We did.

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I was literally a water nymph 
until I was 12, I think.

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It wasn't magical at the 
time, but looking back on it,

191
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it's kind of like...

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But then, you know, she said that all the pictures

193
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started looking like fashion ads.

194
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So, she had to do something else.

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Son: I love the landscapes,

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I don't have any problem with them.

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I was ready to stop getting –

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taking pictures.

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00:10:54,560 --> 00:10:57,030
I was like, ahh, no more taking pictures.

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Daughter: I argue that the 
landscapes are going to be

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the ones that she's going to be remembered for.

202
00:11:04,200 --> 00:11:06,880
In the end, that's going to be what's going to be

203
00:11:06,880 --> 00:11:09,360
the most lasting body of work.

204
00:11:09,360 --> 00:11:12,700
I don't think so, I think 
immediate family was, actually.

205
00:11:12,700 --> 00:11:15,142
The pictures of us were, actually.

206
00:11:15,142 --> 00:11:17,440
No, I'm just playing.

207
00:11:17,440 --> 00:11:19,420
Because these are the most 
interesting subject matter.

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Sally: Well, certainly.

209
00:11:21,120 --> 00:11:25,680
But these have the better skill.

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It's funny, 'cause mom's so...

211
00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:29,240
You have to leave, mom.

212
00:11:31,840 --> 00:11:34,760
I feel stupid talking about 
her if she's in the room.

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00:11:34,760 --> 00:11:39,760
She's, she was raised with no sense of God

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00:11:39,760 --> 00:11:42,720
in such an atheistic family.

215
00:11:42,720 --> 00:11:48,240
And you'll never hear her say 
anything spiritual or religious.

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00:11:48,240 --> 00:11:49,840
Spiritual, maybe.

217
00:11:49,840 --> 00:11:51,960
Even then, she's like, I don't 
want to get too touchy-feely.

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00:11:51,960 --> 00:11:54,160
She's really against that stuff.

219
00:11:54,160 --> 00:11:59,582
But I think it's her bible, it's her expression 
of her spirituality that she can't say

220
00:11:59,746 --> 00:12:01,619
without feeling stupid.

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00:12:02,560 --> 00:12:04,240
Maybe it's the same thing with immediate family,

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00:12:04,240 --> 00:12:06,680
sort of a maternal understanding, maternal love,

223
00:12:06,680 --> 00:12:09,501
that's so hard to express, so she took pictures.

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00:12:17,655 --> 00:12:19,120
Son: I know my mother loves the South,

225
00:12:19,120 --> 00:12:21,360
like there's something just incredible

226
00:12:21,360 --> 00:12:24,680
about places that don't have malls,

227
00:12:25,920 --> 00:12:27,600
and have like a real sense of history.

228
00:12:27,600 --> 00:12:33,217
And I feel like, especially in the United 
States, like that is being destroyed so quickly.

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00:12:39,331 --> 00:12:42,081
Sally: Of course, I can't see 
anymore because I'm blind.

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00:12:42,880 --> 00:12:44,640
Do you have your reading glasses, Larry?

231
00:12:44,640 --> 00:12:48,400
Son: Dad is just as much a part of Mom,

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00:12:48,400 --> 00:12:50,880
their relationship is so much tied with the land,

233
00:12:50,880 --> 00:12:54,680
and I feel like they just are 
really aware of how important

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00:12:54,680 --> 00:12:58,132
maintaining a sense of 
beauty in what surrounds you.

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00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:01,120
We can make a print of it.

236
00:13:01,120 --> 00:13:08,360
Man: I just love the feel of the large images.

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00:13:08,360 --> 00:13:11,528
Often I'll be there when the image is being made.

238
00:13:13,080 --> 00:13:14,520
It's just part of a continuum.

239
00:13:15,640 --> 00:13:18,540
Basically, it's basically pretty good.

240
00:13:18,540 --> 00:13:20,959
It looks nice against the black.

241
00:13:23,240 --> 00:13:27,320
You know, you feel like you're 
intimately involved in the whole process,

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00:13:27,320 --> 00:13:32,040
yet once that final image hits the 
wall, it's got a life of its own.

243
00:13:32,040 --> 00:13:39,986
It's really, it's a wonderful 
experience altogether.

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00:13:47,150 --> 00:13:49,132
Sally: ah!
Just a little lighter.

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00:13:49,132 --> 00:13:57,234
[singing] Over the miles...