guildhall:

Truths Told Slant

The Art of Sally Mann

Sally Mann:

‘I have found tangible evidence that within this life’s sweet tedium reside certain truths: that nothing attains maximum beauty until touched with decay, that the vulgar and miraculous can be one.’

 

‘Sometimes, when I get a good picture, it feels like I have taken another nervous step into increasingly rarified air. Each good-news picture, no matter how hard-earned, allows me only a crumbling foothold on this steepening climb—an ascent whose milestones are fear and doubt.’

 

‘… if it doesn’t have ambiguity, don’t bother to take it. I love that, that aspect of photography—the mendacity of photography—it’s got to have some kind of peculiarity in it or it’s not interesting to me.’

 

‘When the good pictures come, we hope they tell truths, but truths “told slant,” just as Emily Dickinson commanded.’

 

A selection of photographs from Mann’s ‘Deep South’ series, exploring what impact may be left on the land where great loss has occurred.  Sites include the location of Emmett Till’s lynching, Antietam and others.