WEBVTT 00:00:25.438 --> 00:00:26.920 SON: Growing up as a child 00:00:26.920 --> 00:00:31.320 of Sally Mann was not easy at all. 00:00:31.320 --> 00:00:35.160 Anyone who's as driven as Sally Mann is 00:00:35.160 --> 00:00:37.694 is going to be an intense mother. 00:00:40.680 --> 00:00:41.560 She's difficult, 00:00:41.560 --> 00:00:44.120 and for as much as I get annoyed 00:00:44.120 --> 00:00:45.960 and struggle against it and fight it, 00:00:45.960 --> 00:00:47.200 I love it at the same time, 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:50.115 so it's such a Yin and a Yang. 00:00:59.920 --> 00:01:01.835 MANN: God, it does look like the Shroud of Turin 00:01:01.835 --> 00:01:02.440 or something. 00:01:02.440 --> 00:01:04.109 It looks so ponderous – 00:01:05.073 --> 00:01:07.846 whereas this looks so ephemeral. 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:11.504 God, they're just two different pictures. 00:01:15.360 --> 00:01:17.160 Some pictures just have to be a certain way, 00:01:17.160 --> 00:01:22.267 but this doesn't seem to cry  out to be either light or dark. 00:01:23.960 --> 00:01:26.540 Which just makes my job harder, actually. 00:01:27.457 --> 00:01:29.200 WOMAN:: Every time she looks at something, 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:31.200 she's looking at it as an artist. 00:01:31.200 --> 00:01:33.280 It's so much of her energy. 00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:39.200 And so I think we lost, to some extent, a mother, 00:01:39.200 --> 00:01:42.440 but we gained a friend,  and an artistic accomplice, 00:01:42.440 --> 00:01:44.872 and something entirely different. 00:01:47.905 --> 00:01:52.400 MAN: it's a tremendous effort that goes into it. 00:01:52.400 --> 00:01:56.200 Sally will have a pile of, what  I think are beautiful prints, 00:01:56.200 --> 00:01:57.520 and those are the rejects, 00:01:57.520 --> 00:01:59.840 and I'm sitting here going, god. 00:02:07.160 --> 00:02:08.737 This is a tough one. 00:02:13.040 --> 00:02:16.160 What I like about these dog  bones is their ambiguity. 00:02:17.195 --> 00:02:18.920 It takes you a while to figure out what they are, 00:02:18.920 --> 00:02:20.800 or maybe you don't figure it out. 00:02:21.680 --> 00:02:23.960 If it doesn't have ambiguity,  don't bother to take it. 00:02:23.960 --> 00:02:26.320 I mean, I love that, that aspect of photography, 00:02:26.320 --> 00:02:28.000 the mendacity of photography. 00:02:28.920 --> 00:02:31.320 It's got to have some kind of peculiarity in it 00:02:31.320 --> 00:02:33.210 or it's not interesting to me. 00:02:34.880 --> 00:02:36.277 –Do right. 00:02:38.440 --> 00:02:40.000 –Just stay there. 00:02:40.680 --> 00:02:43.000 If I could be said to have any kind of aesthetic, 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:45.080 it's sort of a magpie aesthetic, you know. 00:02:45.080 --> 00:02:48.280 I just go around and I pick up whatever's around. 00:02:48.280 --> 00:02:49.772 It's very spontaneous. 00:02:50.760 --> 00:02:52.920 I see a dog bone, I bring it in, 00:02:52.920 --> 00:02:54.560 I take a picture, I like the picture. 00:02:54.560 --> 00:02:56.880 I took, well, hey, that's a pretty good picture, 00:02:56.880 --> 00:02:58.680 so then I go collect all the other dog bones 00:02:58.680 --> 00:03:01.160 and I bring them in and I  take a few more pictures, 00:03:01.160 --> 00:03:02.360 and then I put them on the wall, 00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:03.840 And then before long, the gallery says, 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:05.160 "Well, let's do a show of dog bones." 00:03:05.160 --> 00:03:06.760 So we do a show of dog bones, 00:03:06.760 --> 00:03:09.660 and then some, like, cynical post-modern critic 00:03:09.660 --> 00:03:11.040 will come along and say, 00:03:11.040 --> 00:03:12.920 "Oh, my god, look at the show of dog bones, 00:03:12.920 --> 00:03:14.760 what do you suppose it means?" 00:03:14.760 --> 00:03:20.120 And that's, ohh! That's a  good dog. Sure, go get it. 00:03:20.120 --> 00:03:21.480 These dog bones are just making art 00:03:21.480 --> 00:03:23.080 the way art should be made, I think, 00:03:23.080 --> 00:03:25.979 without any overarching reference. 00:03:26.520 --> 00:03:29.120 Just for fun, if you can imagine that, 00:03:29.120 --> 00:03:32.134 art for fun, sometimes it is fun. 00:03:41.240 --> 00:03:44.397 There's a lot of dispute about  the proper way to hold this glass. 00:03:52.298 --> 00:03:55.000 I learned how to do this from a master, 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:56.800 he's just a genius teacher, 00:03:56.800 --> 00:03:58.800 and he really knows wet plate collodion. 00:03:58.800 --> 00:03:59.720 his name's Mark Osterman. 00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:08.040 It's a sort of cranky process. 00:04:08.040 --> 00:04:12.004 It doesn't allow for much sloppy technique. 00:04:14.120 --> 00:04:16.000 It's hard to get these chemicals. 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:17.840 They're all, you know, controlled. 00:04:17.840 --> 00:04:21.520 Collodion and ether, and of course, grain alcohol 00:04:21.520 --> 00:04:23.134 you can get, but you can't get it in virginia. 00:04:26.560 --> 00:04:29.520 Then you take it to the silver nitrate. 00:04:29.520 --> 00:04:31.920 –Whoa, there's a bug in here. 00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:34.400 And for reasons that escape me completely, 00:04:34.400 --> 00:04:39.005 the silver nitrate sticks to the  collodion and ether and coats it. 00:04:42.720 --> 00:04:45.080 My plates are horribly flawed. 00:04:45.080 --> 00:04:46.520 but, of course, it's the flaws I like, 00:04:46.520 --> 00:04:47.680 so you pray. 00:04:47.680 --> 00:04:49.080 In your prayer, you pray, 00:04:49.080 --> 00:04:50.920 please don't let me screw  it up, but just screw it up 00:04:50.920 --> 00:04:53.479 a little bit, just enough to make it interesting. 00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:06.160 It's so stupid – I have to use  one hand to hold my shutter shut, 00:05:06.160 --> 00:05:09.404 I have to use a head to  keep the camera from moving. 00:05:11.920 --> 00:05:14.680 There's got to be an easier way. 00:05:14.680 --> 00:05:15.990 All right, well, what do you think? 00:05:18.600 --> 00:05:20.763 30 seconds, I'd say. 00:05:25.043 --> 00:05:29.040 Actually, I'm surprised it took me  this long to get to this process. 00:05:29.040 --> 00:05:35.538 Because I was so immersed in that whole  glass plate, 19th-century aesthetic. 00:05:46.473 --> 00:05:50.000 –I like that one, there's  Jenna being the weirdo again. 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:51.240 –Sally: Oh, without the splinter? 00:05:51.240 --> 00:05:55.280 –Daughter: she's so normal-looking  now, no one would know that she was... 00:05:55.280 --> 00:05:58.680 She was just beautiful,  and she looked like someone 00:05:58.680 --> 00:06:00.960 that stepped out of the wrong century. 00:06:00.960 --> 00:06:03.743 –Yeah, great little model, though. 00:06:03.743 --> 00:06:06.180 –Daughter: The most incredible little girl. 00:06:06.180 --> 00:06:08.440 –Sally: She could put on a  pout like nobody's business. 00:06:08.440 --> 00:06:10.360 –Daughter: She could throw a  fit like nobody's business. 00:06:10.360 --> 00:06:12.760 –Sally: Well, that's true, too. 00:06:12.760 --> 00:06:17.120 The way I approach photography,  it's very spontaneous. 00:06:17.120 --> 00:06:17.920 The children were there, 00:06:17.920 --> 00:06:19.320 so I took pictures of my children. 00:06:19.320 --> 00:06:22.400 It's not that I'm interested  in children that much, 00:06:22.400 --> 00:06:24.780 or photographing them, it's  just that they were there. 00:06:24.780 --> 00:06:28.080 Daughter: She would call  us her models, but usually 00:06:28.080 --> 00:06:30.360 it was just something where she'd say "Freeze," 00:06:30.360 --> 00:06:31.760 and we'd stop what we were doing. 00:06:31.760 --> 00:06:33.520 Sometimes she'd make some small alteration, 00:06:33.520 --> 00:06:35.374 but that was all. 00:06:39.560 --> 00:06:41.520 The one where my hair is on my ribs, 00:06:41.520 --> 00:06:42.880 I remember that I had to keep going back 00:06:42.880 --> 00:06:44.280 and wetting my hair, 00:06:44.280 --> 00:06:46.400 because it would dry and then slip, so... 00:06:46.400 --> 00:06:47.360 that's the only thing that I remember. 00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:47.920 –Sally: do you remember how 00:06:47.920 --> 00:06:51.560 many times we took that picture? –Daughter: Yes, we… I remember. 00:06:51.560 --> 00:06:54.920 –Sally: That was a production, because  someone had to sit behind you in the river 00:06:54.920 --> 00:06:57.480 and thwack the river with the canoe 00:06:57.480 --> 00:06:59.400 to make those little ripples that are behind you. 00:06:59.400 --> 00:07:00.140 –Man: that's what I was doing. 00:07:00.140 --> 00:07:01.640 –Sally: yeah, you were thwacking the river, 00:07:01.640 --> 00:07:03.480 and she was standing there keeping her hair 00:07:03.480 --> 00:07:05.360 from falling off her ribs. 00:07:05.360 --> 00:07:08.960 And still maintaining a beatific expression. 00:07:08.960 --> 00:07:10.841 That was a really hard picture to take. 00:07:12.040 --> 00:07:15.200 I wanted those family pictures to look effortless. 00:07:15.200 --> 00:07:17.648 I wanted them to look like snapshots. 00:07:18.800 --> 00:07:21.720 There is something about  the whole 8 x 10 business. 00:07:21.720 --> 00:07:23.720 The sort of reverence that goes along with it, 00:07:23.720 --> 00:07:26.840 that you have to, you have to pay your dues 00:07:26.840 --> 00:07:28.840 to the photo gods, I guess. 00:07:28.840 --> 00:07:31.760 Son: You know, my mother's vision, 00:07:31.760 --> 00:07:34.800 she had an idea, it was almost like a dream. 00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:37.880 I think she has a dream picture, 00:07:37.880 --> 00:07:41.040 and she just gradually, like, refines it 00:07:41.040 --> 00:07:44.080 until it's exactly what she's looking for. 00:07:44.080 --> 00:07:47.120 It took like five separate trips out here, 00:07:47.120 --> 00:07:50.680 and taking, probably, looked  like 15 to 20 pictures 00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:52.520 every single time. 00:07:52.520 --> 00:07:54.680 She was looking, every time  she took a picture of me, 00:07:54.680 --> 00:07:56.161 I knew she was looking for that 00:07:57.960 --> 00:08:00.840 intensity that I feel my sisters and I have, 00:08:00.840 --> 00:08:01.520 My mother has – 00:08:01.520 --> 00:08:04.920 it's just like this intensity, Mann intensity, 00:08:04.920 --> 00:08:08.705 I don't know what it is,  it plagues me to this day. 00:08:11.174 --> 00:08:12.600 Sally: it was my father who gave me 00:08:12.600 --> 00:08:16.219 almost all my cameras, the  first half-dozen, I guess. 00:08:17.160 --> 00:08:21.240 He was an atheist who practiced 00:08:21.240 --> 00:08:24.120 compassionate medicine, 60 hours a week. 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:26.080 He was enough of a socialist to believe 00:08:26.080 --> 00:08:29.080 you shouldn't have to pay for it if you couldn't. 00:08:29.080 --> 00:08:30.760 But he was also an art collector, 00:08:30.760 --> 00:08:33.040 I mean, he bought Kandinsky in the '30s, 00:08:33.040 --> 00:08:34.720 and Twombly in the '50s. 00:08:34.720 --> 00:08:41.446 And he was quite an unusual  man, and hell to live up to. 00:08:43.280 --> 00:08:45.000 But then, of course, my mother... 00:08:45.734 --> 00:08:48.328 in all different kinds of poses here. 00:08:50.280 --> 00:08:54.200 You couldn't have two more disparate backgrounds. 00:08:54.200 --> 00:08:59.120 My mother with this, like, blue-blood New England, 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:02.935 and my father sort of a renegade Texan. 00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:06.410 But I was the third child. 00:09:07.280 --> 00:09:08.186 Two older brothers. 00:09:09.080 --> 00:09:10.800 And I sort of think by the time I came along, 00:09:10.800 --> 00:09:12.440 everyone was tired of raising children. 00:09:12.440 --> 00:09:14.000 It wasn't that they neglected me, 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:15.920 it was a benign neglect, I guess. 00:09:15.920 --> 00:09:17.360 I know I never wore clothes. 00:09:17.360 --> 00:09:19.680 They're all, every picture of me is naked. 00:09:19.680 --> 00:09:22.440 And they had 12 boxers, so I was always 00:09:22.440 --> 00:09:24.640 surrounded by a pack of dogs. 00:09:24.640 --> 00:09:27.520 I just ran wild for the first  seven years of my life – 00:09:27.520 --> 00:09:28.480 and then went to school, 00:09:28.480 --> 00:09:30.000 and didn't take to it too kindly, 00:09:31.840 --> 00:09:33.798 but I was eventually civilized. 00:09:37.560 --> 00:09:40.000 I guess that's a little how I raised my own kids. 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:42.600 And a little why I was so nonplussed 00:09:42.600 --> 00:09:44.280 when people were so surprised 00:09:44.280 --> 00:09:47.120 to see the pictures of my children without shirts 00:09:47.120 --> 00:09:50.640 and pants, and running wild, too. 00:09:50.640 --> 00:09:54.127 It seemed like a perfectly  normal thing to do, to me. 00:09:57.348 --> 00:09:59.320 Daughter: I don't think I've  ever seen this one before. 00:10:04.560 --> 00:10:06.680 See, that's an example,  you see your hand in there? 00:10:06.680 --> 00:10:08.862 You see how your gesture is? 00:10:09.920 --> 00:10:12.680 You didn't have that clunky child thing. 00:10:12.680 --> 00:10:17.525 You were so svelte and sylph-like. 00:10:22.040 --> 00:10:23.440 Daughter: Everyone looks at these pictures, 00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:26.240 and it's like, you must have  had the most amazing childhood. 00:10:26.240 --> 00:10:27.360 We did. 00:10:27.360 --> 00:10:30.911 I was literally a water nymph  until I was 12, I think. 00:10:32.675 --> 00:10:34.720 It wasn't magical at the  time, but looking back on it, 00:10:34.720 --> 00:10:35.790 it's kind of like... 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:41.200 But then, you know, she said that all the pictures 00:10:41.200 --> 00:10:42.528 started looking like fashion ads. 00:10:43.680 --> 00:10:46.120 So, she had to do something else. 00:10:49.412 --> 00:10:50.440 Son: I love the landscapes, 00:10:50.440 --> 00:10:51.640 I don't have any problem with them. 00:10:51.640 --> 00:10:53.760 I was ready to stop getting – 00:10:53.760 --> 00:10:54.560 taking pictures. 00:10:54.560 --> 00:10:57.030 I was like, ahh, no more taking pictures. 00:10:59.969 --> 00:11:01.800 Daughter: I argue that the  landscapes are going to be 00:11:01.800 --> 00:11:04.200 the ones that she's going to be remembered for. 00:11:04.200 --> 00:11:06.880 In the end, that's going to be what's going to be 00:11:06.880 --> 00:11:09.360 the most lasting body of work. 00:11:09.360 --> 00:11:12.700 I don't think so, I think  immediate family was, actually. 00:11:12.700 --> 00:11:15.142 The pictures of us were, actually. 00:11:15.142 --> 00:11:17.440 No, I'm just playing. 00:11:17.440 --> 00:11:19.420 Because these are the most  interesting subject matter. 00:11:19.420 --> 00:11:21.120 Sally: Well, certainly. 00:11:21.120 --> 00:11:25.680 But these have the better skill. 00:11:25.680 --> 00:11:28.280 It's funny, 'cause mom's so... 00:11:28.280 --> 00:11:29.240 You have to leave, mom. 00:11:31.840 --> 00:11:34.760 I feel stupid talking about  her if she's in the room. 00:11:34.760 --> 00:11:39.760 She's, she was raised with no sense of God 00:11:39.760 --> 00:11:42.720 in such an atheistic family. 00:11:42.720 --> 00:11:48.240 And you'll never hear her say  anything spiritual or religious. 00:11:48.240 --> 00:11:49.840 Spiritual, maybe. 00:11:49.840 --> 00:11:51.960 Even then, she's like, I don't  want to get too touchy-feely. 00:11:51.960 --> 00:11:54.160 She's really against that stuff. 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 00:11:59.746 --> 00:12:01.619 without feeling stupid. 00:12:02.560 --> 00:12:04.240 Maybe it's the same thing with immediate family, 00:12:04.240 --> 00:12:06.680 sort of a maternal understanding, maternal love, 00:12:06.680 --> 00:12:09.501 that's so hard to express, so she took pictures. 00:12:17.655 --> 00:12:19.120 Son: I know my mother loves the South, 00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:21.360 like there's something just incredible 00:12:21.360 --> 00:12:24.680 about places that don't have malls, 00:12:25.920 --> 00:12:27.600 and have like a real sense of history. 00:12:27.600 --> 00:12:33.217 And I feel like, especially in the United  States, like that is being destroyed so quickly. 00:12:39.331 --> 00:12:42.081 Sally: Of course, I can't see  anymore because I'm blind. 00:12:42.880 --> 00:12:44.640 Do you have your reading glasses, Larry? 00:12:44.640 --> 00:12:48.400 Son: Dad is just as much a part of Mom, 00:12:48.400 --> 00:12:50.880 their relationship is so much tied with the land, 00:12:50.880 --> 00:12:54.680 and I feel like they just are  really aware of how important 00:12:54.680 --> 00:12:58.132 maintaining a sense of  beauty in what surrounds you. 00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:01.120 We can make a print of it. 00:13:01.120 --> 00:13:08.360 Man: I just love the feel of the large images. 00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:11.528 Often I'll be there when the image is being made. 00:13:13.080 --> 00:13:14.520 It's just part of a continuum. 00:13:15.640 --> 00:13:18.540 Basically, it's basically pretty good. 00:13:18.540 --> 00:13:20.959 It looks nice against the black. 00:13:23.240 --> 00:13:27.320 You know, you feel like you're  intimately involved in the whole process, 00:13:27.320 --> 00:13:32.040 yet once that final image hits the  wall, it's got a life of its own. 00:13:32.040 --> 00:13:39.986 It's really, it's a wonderful  experience altogether. 00:13:47.150 --> 00:13:49.132 Sally: ah! Just a little lighter. 00:13:49.132 --> 00:13:57.234 [singing] Over the miles...