Sally Mann: Upon Reflection @Houk

 

JTF (just the facts): A total of 23 black and white photographic works, unframed and hung against light peach colored walls in the main gallery space and the smaller side room. All of the works are ambrotypes (unique collodion wet-plate positives on black glass), made between 2006 and 2012. Each unit print is sized roughly 15x14. The individual works are arranged into groups and grids of 1, 3, 6, 9, and 20 prints, and are divided by subject matter into two projects: Self-Portraits and Omphalos. There are 17 works from Self-Portraits and 6 works from Omphalos on view. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In the future, when some museum does a full and comprehensive retrospective of Sally Mann's work, I think it will be fascinating to consider how her embrace of the wet-plate collodion process has changed the trajectory of her artistic life. In my view, there is a very distinct break right in the middle of her prolific career, a before wet-plate and after wet-plate bright line where her work took an entirely new direction. Some will argue that the progression is smoother than I am making out, that she has always thoughtfully focused her camera on her family and the land around her, but to my eye, while the subjects haven't evolved dramatically, the mood is meaningfully different, perhaps a byproduct of the ghostly look and feel of the wet-plate prints, or perhaps a turn inward toward a more complex and personal psychological landscape.

What is new here is that after a riding accident laid her up with serious injuries in 2006, she boldly turned the camera on herself, making countless head shot portraits and nude torsos. There are no smiling, happy faces in this parade, however; her expressions cover the territory from deadpan to grave, with a few stops for steely, weary, wise, zombie-eyed, and almost meditatively ecstatic in between. The tonalities shift from washed out grey to brown to bronze to shadowy black, and the chance movements of the chemicals create unexpected spectral drips, swirls, and highlights that often obscure the image. Some of the works have also been scratched and abraded, with the emulsion flaking and chipping off, exposing areas of crackly black glass. Seen together as grids and typologies, the faces become a taxonomy of subtle emotional states; a wisp of hair or the details of wrinkles make some of the pictures humanly specific, while others drift into silhouette or death mask, the personal features erased and blurred. Mann's torso images are generally more abstract, reducing her body to a sculptural mass of white with a shadowy hint of a belly button or a dark triangle. The classical forms seem smooth and weathered, like fertility symbols from antiquity, at once haunting and timeless. The variation in these images is more subtle, elemental curves repeated with minute changes in brightness and contrast.

While Mann's images her nude husband were tender in their unflinching truth, these images of her own face and body seem tougher to me, even in their most elegant state. When she does engage the camera, her gaze is strict and penetrating, and I felt a sense of quiet defiance, a letting down of her guard but with a knowing resignation to and acceptance of what she was letting in. Taken together, the works are a rich, multi-dimensional portrait, full of dark, complex emotions and ephemeral moods, riding on an undercurrent of inner strength.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced based on the number of prints included in the work/grid. The single print works are $20000, the 3 print works are $36000, the 6 print works are $60000, the 9 print works are $84000, and the 20 unit work is $172000. Mann's photographs are widely available in the secondary markets. Auction prices for Mann's prints have generally ranged between $3000 and $70000 in recent years, with most still under $20000. Her earlier works were printed in editions of 10 and 25, so these new unique works will clearly have a different scarcity value. Mann is also represented in New York by Gagosian Gallery (here).

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Exhibit: Virginia Museum of Art, 2010 (here)

Sally Mann: Upon Reflection

Through November 3rd

 

Edwynn Houk Gallery

745 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10151

Auction Results: Photographs by Sally Mann, October 7, 2009 @Christie's

Christie's has to be generally pleased with the results of the Sally Mann single owner sale last week: the buy-in rate was on the low side (just over 20%) and the Total Sale Proceeds fell nicely within the estimate range, at just over $660000. This sale seems to have been a case of getting expectations set appropriately all around, and then solidly meeting those expectations.

The summary statistics are below (all results include the buyer’s premium):

Total Lots: 59
Pre Sale Low Total Estimate: $583000
Pre Sale High Total Estimate: $869000
Total Lots Sold: 47
Total Lots Bought In: 12
Buy In %: 20.34%
Total Sale Proceeds: $667625

Here is the breakdown (using the Low, Mid, and High definitions from the preview post, here):

Low Total Lots: 17
Low Sold: 13
Low Bought In: 4
Buy In %: 23.53%
Total Low Estimate: $133000
Total Low Sold: $97875

Mid Total Lots: 42
Mid Sold: 34
Mid Bought In: 8
Buy In %: 19.05%
Total Mid Estimate: $736000
Total Mid Sold: $569750

High Total Lots: 0
High Sold: 0
High Bought In: 0
Buy In %: NA%
Total High Estimate: $0
Total High Sold: NA

89.36% of the lots that sold had proceeds in or above the estimate range. There were no surprises in this sale (defined as having proceeds of at least double the high estimate).

The top lot by High estimate was lot 307 Sally Mann, Candy Cigarette, 1989, at $30000-50000; it was also the top outcome of the sale at $68500.

Complete lot by lot results can be found here.

Christie's
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

As an aside, the average price paid for work in this sale was just over $14200 per lot (i.e. the total sale proceeds divided by the total number of lots that actually sold); this is an interesting comparison to the "about $20000" being charged for Mann's new work (here).

Sally Mann, Proud Flesh @Gagosian

JTF (just the facts): A total of 33 black and white images, framed in silver and matted, and hung in three connected gallery rooms on the 4th floor. All of the prints are gelatin silver prints, made from wet collodion negatives; the works are approximately 15x14, and are printed in editions of 5. The negatives were taken between 2003 and 2009. A catalogue of the show is available from the gallery for $75. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: In contrast to the usual photographer/model interaction, something altogether different occurs when a husband or wife photographs his or her spouse, especially when those images are nudes; emotions run higher, deeper vulnerabilities get exposed, and more willing risks get taken. In the history of photography, it has traditionally been the men taking pictures of the women, and there are plenty of superlative examples to recall: Stieglitz and O'Keefe, Strand and Rebecca, Weston and Charis, Callahan and Eleanor, just to name a few; on the flip side, there are few if any examples where the role was reversed - the only one I can come up with is Cunningham's nudes of Roi from the early 1900s, and these pictures were deemed too risque for wider viewing until decades later. Sally Mann is in many ways the perfect photographer to step into this void and take the male nude somewhere new; her unflinching portraits of her young children are profound evidence of her willingness to take some chances to explore the boundaries of how we see one another.

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Over the period of about five years, Mann took pictures of her husband Larry, whose strong body was showing the signs of aging and the results of a battle with muscular dystrophy. The shadowy images are mostly indirect fragments: arms and backs, hips and buttocks, legs and elbows, feet and folds of skin, photographed in angled natural light, leaving plenty of darkness and melancholy. The settings are sparse: lying on a metal table, sitting on a stool, resting on a striped mattress with the stuffing coming out, or walking on a patterned Oriental rug. And if the compositions weren't striking enough in and of themselves, Mann's 19th century process adds yet another layer of timeless complexity to the works: many of the images are covered with chemical drips and splotches, stains and rips, and all manner of chance imperfections that often decorate each picture with swirls and streaks; others have been bleached out to a wince inducing whiteness.

These pictures are a far cry from beefcake portraits of men with ripped abs and massive shoulders; they tackle head on the questions of aging, waning strength, and male vulnerability. But unlike the unflinching self portraits of John Coplans, which address similar subject matter, these images are undeniably the gaze of a wife at her husband, which changes the emotional setting completely. What I think is most remarkable about these pictures is their amazing sense of honor; there are no longer any secrets between these two people, anything that was once hidden has long ago been revealed. The intimate pictures expose Larry's frailties with respect and trust; they are images seen through the eyes of someone who loves this wiry and withered aging man.

Overall, these revealing and often unexpectedly beautiful works have the feeling of a contract: Mann was taking something from her husband, who gave it willingly, but not without giving up something of himself in the bargain; the emotional pitch is so consistently high that the show is a little exhausting. As a male viewer, I think there is one additional level of meaning here: a sense of wisdom shared, a look into the future and what it might mean to get older, and an example of how to bear those years with dignity and grace.
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Collector's POV: No printed price list was available for this show, but I was told the images were "about $20000" each. While part of our collection is currently made up of female nudes, these images are really the first male nudes from any period in the history of photography that seem like they could fit within our existing group. I particularly enjoyed Ponder Heart, 2007 (a back and hand in the bright sunlight), The Nature of Loneliness, 2008 (a back), Amor Revealed, 2007 (the curve of a hip, reminiscent of a nude by Ruth Bernhard), and Hephaestus, 2008 (a frontal pose like a Greek god). And overall, with no pun intended, I expect these works will age extremely well.

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Review @FT (here)
• Artist statement @Conscientious (here)
• Book review @5B4 (here)

Sally Mann, Proud Flesh

Through October 31st

Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10075

Auction: Photographs by Sally Mann, October 7, 2009 @Christie's

The single owner, single artist auction is the event in the secondary markets that looks and feels most like a gallery or museum show. In fact, this upcoming sale at Christie's bears a striking resemblance to a show of Sally Mann's entire Immediate Family series held at Edwynn Houk Gallery (here) in New York in early 2008 (unfortunately, I no longer have the price list from that show for side by side comparisons of individual images then and now). In this case, a dedicated collector from Washington, D.C., has assembled a broad range of Mann's work, and while most of the prints on offer here are from Immediate Family, there are a few others mixed in as well, some of which are unpublished. Overall, there are a total of 59 lots up for sale, with a total High estimate of $869000. (Catalog cover at right.)

In my experience, even after 20 years, these images still have a surprisingly polarizing effect on people: either they really like them (they are amazed by the quality of the prints, intrigued by the subtleties and vulnerabilities of youth etc.) or they find them very unsettling (the children are too young and exposed, too provocatively posed etc.). Perhaps this is the reason that a handful of images in this catalog have no online picture ("image not available"); while we might not call it censorship exactly, Christie's seems to be exercising some discretion in the event these images are found too upsetting for some.

Here's the breakdown:

Total Low Lots (high estimate up to and including $10000): 17
Total Low Estimate (sum of high estimates of Low lots): $133000

Total Mid Lots (high estimate between $10000 and $50000): 42
Total Mid Estimate: $736000
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Total High Lots (high estimate above $50000): 0
Total High Estimate: NA

The top lot by High estimate is lot 307 Sally Mann, Candy Cigarette, 1989, at $30000-50000.

While Mann's work is not a particularly good fit for our collecting genres, we have considered Night Blooming Cereus quite a few times over the years. The small 8x10 print in this sale is a terrific example of how size matters, as when this image gets printed larger, for some reason, it seems to take on a more Polynesian feel in our eyes, which we like quite a bit less. So our short list for this sale includes:
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Lot 326 Sally Mann, Night Blooming Cereus, 1988 (at right)

Lot 350 Sally Mann, Gooseneck Loosestrife, 1985

The complete lot by lot catalog can be found here. The eCatalogue is located here.

Photographs by Sally Mann from a Private Collection, Washington, D.C.
October 7th

Christie's
20 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10020

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UPDATE: After I published this preview, I got a nice note from the press folks at Christie's with the following response to the online Mann images (or lack thereof): "Christie's is being culturally sensitive to clients in all of the markets in which we operate." Mystery solved.