Sally Mann

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is the photographer Sally Mann. She's been described as a memoirist, exploring her own story and that of the American South through her pictures and more recently as a writer. Her work has made her one of the most influential photographers in the US today. She was born in 1950s, Virginia, into a bohemian family. Her father was a country doctor who collected modern art and gave her her first camera. She met her husband Larry, then a blacksmith, at 18. Their family became her subject. The atmospheric images she captured of their three children on their remote, self-sufficient farm in rural Lexington garnered critical acclaim while also provoking censure from some conservative commentators. In her work, beauty sits alongside loss. Her landscapes of former Civil War battlegrounds, studies of the human body, both living and dead, and her intimate portraits of her husband, who has muscular dystrophy, explore the interplay between life and decay, mourning what is gone while eulogizing what survives. She says, To be able to take my pictures, I have to look all the time at the people and places I care about, and I must do so with both ardour and cool appraisal, with the passions of eye and heart, but in that ardent heart there must also be a splinter of ice. Sally Mann, welcome to Desert Island Discs. I think we should start with that splinter of ice, Sally. How does that help you?

Sally Mann2:12

Yeah. Take a great shot.

Presenter2:13

Yeah.

Sally Mann2:14

It just helps with the objectivity, I think.

Sally Mann2:17

There's plenty of order. I've got mountains of that in every buckets of it.

Speaker 12:20

Buckets.

Sally Mann2:22

But every so often you'd have to be kind of ruthless. And do you always know when you've got the shot?

Sally Mann2:29

Mm, most of the time. Yeah, but not always. There's some sleepers that come along, and they come along at different times. Sometimes

Sally Mann2:37

You'll develop your film and you'll realize that you'd actually taken a good picture that you thought was going to be a dog. And then at other times, you'll go back, as I've been doing, 25, 30, 40 years, and you'll realize that the pictures that you had thought were important then, you were trying to cram it into the glass slipper of a concept, right? But in fact, some of the pictures that you didn't use were talking about other things that you maybe weren't interested in at the time, but that are interesting to me now. And what about a shoot day? What's a tip?

Presenter3:09

they like for you. Is there such a thing?

Sally Mann3:11

Uh no, there there really isn't. It depends on what I'm photographing. I mean when I was photographing the children, it was the camera was just kind of always set up and I was hoping that they would do something interesting. And then I would hope that I could freeze them long enough to get the picture. Now it's more just packing well, the camera lives in my car. It's a big view camera, a Deardorf eight by ten view camera. And it's just a question of getting in the car and driving around.

Presenter3:36

Sally, you talked about how your own perspective on your work can change over the years and shift. How much thought do you give to other people's perspective and what they take away from your work? Are you thinking about that as part of your process?

Sally Mann3:50

I probably should think a little more about it, huh? It truly has shocked me to find how people interpret my work. And it shouldn't. I'm just naive. When people, in my view, misunderstand my work, it's always a surprise to me. What kind of spirit would you like them to approach it with? Well, with an open mind, of course, right? But that doesn't always happen, and particularly not now in America, anyway. In the current climate, you know. Yeah, in the current climate. I thought I was done worrying about it maybe 10 or 15 years ago.

Speaker 14:17

Yeah, and then

Sally Mann4:23

But I'm more worried about it now than I was.

Presenter4:25

Then, I think. Some of your pictures were were taken out of a gallery in Texas earlier this year, weren't they, by local officials? Yeah. How did that feel to you? That must be a tough experience.

Sally Mann4:31

By local officials.

Sally Mann4:36

It was scary. I was very surprised but in retrospect I probably shouldn't have been.

Sally Mann4:41

And I think it's a harbinger of things to come. I think this is going to happen more and more to people. The pictures of the children are just a flashpoint in the new Christian nationalist movement. I don't want to rile the bull. I just want I want to be left alone. So I'm not showing that work. And that was just sort of an anomalous exhibition and I thought it would be harmless to put it on the walls.

Sally Mann5:05

Bad decision.

Presenter5:05

Bad decision. Yeah. You know, when you said it'll happen more and more to people, are you talking about other artists or I am, yeah.

Sally Mann5:12

I am, yeah, yeah, and institutions. I mean, look what's happening to the whole Smithsonian. It's just getting whitewashed, absolutely.

Presenter5:20

Yeah.

Sally Mann5:21

Yeah.

Presenter5:21

Sally, you're with us sharing your music today and the discs that are important to you. Do you listen while working in the darkroom?

Sally Mann5:29

That's what made this so hard.

Presenter5:30

Uh

Sally Mann5:31

Oh my god, as you can see, I've got reams of paper. I've got notes of all the notes.

Presenter5:35

Notes on notes.

Sally Mann5:38

I listen to music. Music, it's my Madeleine. I can place exactly where I was and what picture I was taking when I hear certain songs and what I was printing when I hear certain songs. It's some kind of weird

Sally Mann5:52

synesthesiac, Nabokovian, weird relationship I have with music. So this was very difficult for me.

Presenter5:54

Weird

Presenter5:57

So this was

Presenter5:58

And does that mean that you sometimes, you know, you can hear the music when you look at the picture then? Does it work? Yes, exactly.

Presenter6:06

Well, we're looking forward to spending some time there. I think we should dive in with your first disc. Tell us about your first choice today, Sallyman. What is it and why are you taking it to the island?

Sally Mann6:07

Some time there.

Sally Mann6:15

I would take Keith Jarrett, and in particular I would take the Colin Concert part one because of the passion that he develops with the music. Almost

Sally Mann6:27

It starts out kind of slowly and then before long you realize he's almost like making love to the piano. He's groaning and grunting and it sounds completely spontaneous. He probably rehearsed it a thousand times. I have no idea. But that degree of passion in the production of his art is what I feel sometimes in my own.

Presenter7:43

Keith Jarrett playing at the 1975 Cologne concert. And it was wonderful to see you just lost in that track as well, Sally. I love it. I love it.

Sally Mann7:49

Yeah.

Presenter7:52

I'm transported. So listen, let's go back to the beginning. Sally Mann, you were born in Lexington, Virginia, in 1951, the youngest of three children, I think, to Robert and Elizabeth. And your dad was the local doctor. Tell me a little bit about him. How do you remember him?

Sally Mann8:01

Rabbit

Sally Mann8:08

Oh, he was remarkable. I devoted the whole last part of my first book, Hold Still, to my father, because he was a cipher, on the one hand, but he also was

Sally Mann8:17

Just so extraordinary. I had to dig into his his life and h how he

Sally Mann8:23

Turned out the way he did. Born in Dallas, Texas, right there, but a liberal, a Adelaide Stevenson liberal, and Americans will know what that means, like a real die-hard liberal, and a very, very compassionate man.

Presenter8:36

Deep.

Sally Mann8:37

That he was a scientist. FIFA.

Presenter8:38

hard to get to know, kind of like remote in a way, but

Sally Mann8:42

Definitely remote. He didn't talk much. He was a a deeply humanistic and intellectual man. He read everything, traveled widely.

Presenter8:49

and great taste in art.

Sally Mann8:50

This is my

Presenter8:50

This is great.

Sally Mann8:51

Aster?

Presenter8:52

What was he buying when you were growing up? What kind of

Sally Mann8:52

What was

Sally Mann8:54

Uh

Presenter8:54

Okay.

Sally Mann8:55

Well, he bought Kandinsky actually toward the end I didn't like what he bought, so we won't go there. But early on and he bought Kandinsky in the thirties and then w one day he ran into Sae Twombly walking down the street in nineteen fifty two, I think.

Presenter8:59

Yeah, but early

Sally Mann9:08

And Cy was carrying one of his scribble paintings under his arm and and daddy asked him about it'cause they knew Cy. And Cy said, Well, I've got this painting. Y you want it, Doctor? and Daddy said, Sure and he reached in his back pocket and pulled out a hundred dollar bill, and that's how he got this amazing Cy Twabler.

Presenter9:22

And that's how we got

Presenter9:26

And he Saitombly remained a friend of yours throughout his life. You would sit in front of the supermarket with him shooting the breeze, wouldn't you? Yeah, we'd just drive around.

Sally Mann9:29

Oh I did, yeah.

Presenter9:35

So you told me a little bit about your father, Robert. Tell me about your mother, Elizabeth.

Sally Mann9:40

They were the most mismatched pair you could imagine. She was from Boston, but also was poor. Her father was a Welsh immigrant, and they had no money. And she had ambitions. She was very smart and strikingly beautiful. And she had ambitions, but they couldn't be realized. She wanted to be a doctor. She wanted to be a doctor. So she ended up working in a lab.

Presenter9:56

She wanted to be a doctor.

Sally Mann10:01

Doing blood tests or something. And she looked out the window one day and she saw this.

Sally Mann10:07

Young Doctor, white coat and all.

Sally Mann10:10

And he got out of a chauffeured car and every day he would be driven home to wh wherever home was, in Boston, to lunch and driven back. And she just thought it was appalling.

Sally Mann10:23

kind of privilege. And then she met him and

Presenter10:26

They fell in love. You've written in your memoir that as a southern family in the fifties and sixties you were simply different and you all knew it. Tell me more about

Sally Mann10:36

Bye by that. It was so conservative. People were relaxed and they all joined the country club and played golf and the fathers went to work and the mothers stayed home and raised the children.

Sally Mann10:46

That wasn't my life exactly. They were

Speaker 110:48

They

Sally Mann10:49

Vehemently opposed to the country club because it wouldn't let Jews in, or blacks, of course, or anybody, you know, that.

Sally Mann10:56

They now are obliged to.

Presenter11:10

She's just not come in?

Sally Mann11:11

Yeah, and then and then I would get pulled out of class and they would seat me outside the principal's office where the bad kids got seated and all the kids going in to lunch.

Presenter11:11

Uh

Sally Mann11:23

Would walk by and think I'd done something bad, and this was every day. And how did you feel about that? I wanted to go to Bible class, right? Of course.

Presenter11:27

Bye.

Presenter11:31

Of course. I was desperate to take Bible class. And what about your relationship with your parents? Because they sound larger than life and completely fascinating. But you you have written about not being able to form a kind of emotional bond with them in in the way that you might have liked to, particularly when you were young and and having the feeling of wanting to back then.

Sally Mann11:51

In later in life, I had a much better relationship with them, but early on they were pretty a lot of um the mothers in in that time, and particularly in the South, they had help.

Presenter11:55

Early

Sally Mann12:03

So early on in the in 1947, I think, they hired Virginia Carter, a black woman who was renowned for her cooking. And she came to work for my parents, and she worked for them for 50 years. And she raised all three of us and was kind and compassionate and taught us to be likewise and was an extraordinary presence in our lives. And you know, I can't say she replaced my mother. I sort of wanted to have a mother, but I guess in a way she did.

Presenter12:37

Am I right in thinking that you named your daughter after her?

Sally Mann12:41

And we called her Gee gee.

Sally Mann12:43

She had learned to read, which was really unusual. You know, there was no education for black people back then, but somehow she had learned to read, and so she was the person who read me stories when she had time. But she I mean, she worked really hard.

Sally Mann12:57

And she was ironing and cooking and cleaning. She did everything. My mother used to sort of lie on the couch I remember her vividly with an ashtray on her stomach.

Sally Mann13:08

And her stocking feet sort of rubbing together languidly, and smoking a cigarette and reading the New Yorker or Harper's or The Atlantic, while all this bustle was around her. Children were being raised, her food was getting cooked. You know, that was just the way it was. I mean, I don't hold it against her, but it was a strange sight.

Presenter13:29

I think we should take a moment for some music. What are you going to play us next?

Sally Mann13:34

I chose Odetta because she was for me the voice of the civil rights movement, and that was a very important aspect of my childhood. My parents, I mean, they didn't march because there were no marches, but they did support the civil rights movement in oblique ways. Like my mother paid Virginia GG.

Sally Mann13:55

twice what everybody else paid per hour, and I'm ashamed to tell you what that is, but I think it was something like five dollars a week.

Sally Mann14:03

Or something like that. It's appalling. And she started getting death threats. Letters written to her, yeah, I've seen them, for rocking the boat in the community by paying so much money to her maid. And Gigi used to sing these songs to you, or debtor's songs to you. Gigi had an amazing voice. She would take me to her church sometimes, and it was like waves of sound were washing over me. She sang. She would sing me to sleep. And she would sing, you know.

Sally Mann14:34

all the pretty horses and a lot of the old Southern ballads. But her voice was so rich and so reminiscent of this singer Odetta, it was so hard to decide which song exactly. But I chose Take This Hammer.

Speaker 114:51

Yeah.

Speaker 114:55

Our lives are

Speaker 115:00

I don't want

Speaker 115:03

Oh my god!

Sally Mann15:04

Shut up.

Sally Mann15:09

I don't mind you.

Sally Mann15:12

Old iron shadow and my leg body.

Presenter15:21

Great, huh? Fabulous. Odetta, and take this hammer. I don't want it. So Sally Mann G G had a fascinating life. I mean, she lived to be a hundred and she had six children of her own. I mean, incredible.

Speaker 115:32

Yeah.

Presenter15:34

I know that you've met up with her family as an adult and and talked about the dynamics between the two lives that she had, you know, her life with your family and and with her own family. Was that a difficult conversation to have and, you know, the pull and the the tension between the two?

Sally Mann15:50

I did burst into tears. I mean,

Sally Mann15:53

My cluelessness as a child is so painful to me even now. I never thought it odd that Gee Gee came on Christmas morning and cooked and served and washed up

Sally Mann16:06

All day on Christmas, and then went home to her own six children, you know. So I asked them.

Sally Mann16:13

These are her grandchildren actually. And they said, you know, it was just the way it was. They did not in any way make me feel as miserable as I felt. They didn't pile on at all. They were very kind. They said, We just had Christmas later than everybody else. They're so gracious about it.

Speaker 116:20

Miserable as I

Sally Mann16:31

And I think that

Presenter16:31

And I think they loved that, you know, you captured some really beautiful photographs of her and that that she's part of your artwork and and your story too.

Sally Mann16:36

And that should be a little bit.

Sally Mann16:39

Yeah, I mean

Presenter16:40

They knew I

Sally Mann16:41

I loved her, and they knew she loved me, which every white person says that in the South. Oh, my mammy just loved me. But

Sally Mann16:49

She did love me, there's no qu

Presenter16:51

Question? It's interesting that you say you you were as a child obviously completely unaware of the racial and political dynamics of the South and family life and everything that was going on around you. When did you start to understand what was happening? When did your eyes become open to the civil rights movement, to the conversations that were going on?

Sally Mann17:10

Shamefully late, when I was sent away to school at age 15, 16, to a very liberal boarding school in Vermont, that's when, and I had a black teacher. There weren't any black teachers. In fact, the schools were segregated when I was growing up. And he very, very gently illuminated the truth to me. But prior to that, my brother Chris had been very involved in the civil rights movement. He sat in down in North Carolina in the drugstores, and he went to prison 17 times. 17 times. 17 times. Was he hurt? Was he yeah, he was. He was beaten. He was pissed on. He was hit by a sword. The litany of things that happened to him in the course of his civil rights activism is really quite astounding. And he's lucky to be alive. It was the same time that the three boys, Shermer, Goodwin, and I can't remember the third one, were found in the dam in Mississippi. So they were white protesters, as well.

Speaker 117:41

Seven.

Speaker 117:43

Yeah.

Presenter18:07

Do you think that's a good one?

Sally Mann18:08

He was in that exact same situation, was thrown in jail. It was a really dangerous time. And Gigi Gee Gee was more scared than anybody. I tell a story in Hold Still about one day

Sally Mann18:20

Picking up, there was a crippled black boy who lived in our town, and he was walking the six miles between our nearest town and Lexington. I picked him up, and he was extremely reticent to get in the car, but he did. He sat in the back, and I dropped him off, and I was feeling all virtuous and do-goody. I got home, and I told Gigi about it, and I have never seen her so angry. She backed me up against the wall with her two arms and held me there, and she said, Never do that again. And I thought, oh, she was really worried about me. No, what she was worried about was the boy.

Presenter18:59

Look.

Sally Mann19:01

Yeah.

Presenter19:01

Let's have some more music, Sally. It's your third choice today. What are we going to hear next?

Sally Mann19:06

It's the dough. It's the song Trustful Hands. I chose it because I asked my daughter Jessie how she would like to be represented. And I asked her because if I'm on a desert island, I want my children's voices with me. And the other two are represented by their actual voices. But she's not a singer. So she suggested this, and I think it's an absolutely apt choice. She has adopted two foster children, and she felt that if she was going to be represented by any action of her life, it would be the trustful hands that she is now holding these children with.

Presenter19:50

Oh, that's a beautiful thought.

Sally Mann19:51

She's an artist and she's also has a PhD in neuroscience and she's applied both skills to raising these two boys. They're brothers.

Sally Mann20:02

We all said James

Presenter20:04

Delanimos, we are on the call for criminals. We were meant to make a people to meant to break the laws of gravity to us.

Sally Mann20:23

Yeah.

Presenter20:29

The Doe and Trustful Hands. So, Sally, let's talk about you as a teenager. You mentioned that you went to boarding school at fifteen. What kind of teenager were you?

Presenter20:40

Difficult. Stroppy.

Sally Mann20:42

Uh

Presenter20:44

Uh

Sally Mann20:44

Rebellious? A bit rebellious. But I didn't get kicked out, although there were some near-misses, some brushes. So it was at school?

Sally Mann20:55

But it was a

Sally Mann20:57

I was often working and still do with a sort of overarching concept. And so back then I did a lot of photography in the poorest county in America. It's Harlan County in Kentucky. I went down there as a nurse's assistant. And I did a lot of pictures and I was really trying to show what true poverty looked like. None of them were very successful, but I tried to say things with my pictures.

Presenter21:23

So yeah, right from the beginning. Right from the beginning.

Sally Mann21:24

Right.

Presenter21:26

You went on to graduate from college with the highest distinction possible in a degree in literature. You'd married your husband Larry by then. Life was coming together. What were your plans at that point? What did you think your future would look like?

Presenter21:39

Yeah.

Sally Mann21:39

I wanted to be a poet, but back then you couldn't earn a living as a poet. So the only other thing I was good at was photography.

Sally Mann21:47

And I had to earn a living. So that's what I did. So what kind of pictures were you taking? I worked for a university. So I was doing all the headshots for the football team and the grip and grin ones where someone gives a check to the university and there's a handshake and the most boring, miserable work you've ever imagined. But that's how I got good. You described me, Singlari, as the universe gave me a pass.

Speaker 122:00

There's a handshake.

Presenter22:10

All of the rebellious things that I'd done because you came face to face with Larry Mann.

Sally Mann22:15

I did. How did I? I lucked out. I saw him across the room, and he paid no attention to me, but I just.

Presenter22:16

I did a lot.

Sally Mann22:22

fixed my glittering, avaricious eyes on him and said, He's mine and just I think I proposed to him within the first first month. Reading. Oh, yeah.

Sally Mann22:32

He was great. I mean, he still is great. We've been married fifty-five years.

Presenter22:36

I know that Larry's family went through some incredibly difficult times. A couple of years later, his mother.

Presenter22:43

shot her husband and then turned the gun on herself, which is absolutely horrifying. How did you find out what had happened?

Sally Mann22:52

Literally the sheriff drove up and said, you know, there's there's been this terrible thing. We were not close with them. They really hated me. They I was not who they wanted Larry to marry.

Presenter23:02

What did they want it?

Sally Mann23:04

They wanted a society girl. They wanted someone with money and with prestige that would float all the boats, and their boat was in need of floating. Did they make their displeasure Was it obvious? And the background to it was that it emerged that they were addicts. Yeah, they were using a lot of drugs. He was a psychiatrist and he had access to them, and what he couldn't get, he got a friend to get for him. He was prescribing prescription drugs.

Presenter23:15

Do we say off?

Speaker 123:30

Yeah.

Presenter23:30

Still watch.

Speaker 123:30

Uh

Sally Mann23:45

They weren't.

Presenter23:45

Uh

Sally Mann23:46

heavily

Presenter23:46

But you spent time with him, you said

Sally Mann23:46

Immature.

Sally Mann23:48

You weren't close, but Yeah, we would see them as we would drive back and forth to Bennington College where I was in school for a brief two years and we would stop by there and they and they also drank really heavily. They were almost non functional.

Speaker 123:58

Yeah.

Sally Mann24:01

Yeah, but she was functional enough to pull out that shotgun. A very unusual situation, a woman doing that. Yeah. Everyone says, How did Larry survive that? He actually was quite

Sally Mann24:14

Resigned, you know, he wasn't surprised particularly. I mean, w it's a shock when something like that happens.

Sally Mann24:20

But he handled it.

Sally Mann24:22

you know, really quite well. He was a perfect partner for me.

Presenter24:25

Unflappable. Unflappable.

Sally Mann24:26

Yeah. Topic

Presenter24:27

And one of your subjects, right from the beginning. Yeah, true.

Sally Mann24:30

The next show I'm going to have will be at Goodgozi and it's all pictures of Larry that I've been doing for years and years.

Presenter24:37

Sally, it's time to go to the music. Your fourth choice today.

Sally Mann24:41

What's it gonna be? It's my daughter Virginia at age maybe fifteen, sixteen, singing a solo at her boarding school.

Sally Mann24:50

It is O Holy Night, and I hope she doesn't kill me for this.

Sally Mann24:55

But it's so beautiful, and it's so her. It's so precise.

Sally Mann25:00

That's so graceful. Were you there for the performance? Did you get to watch it? See, that's the worst part. No, I was not. And she'll never let me forget it. I was not there for this performance. But you'll have it with you on your desert island. I sure will.

Presenter25:03

Yeah.

Speaker 125:03

Yeah.

Presenter25:09

But you'll

Presenter25:11

Pai sh

Presenter26:11

Just beautiful. Your daughter Virginia Mann singing the solo in O Holy Night with the concert choir of Saint Andrew's School, Delaware, Sally. What a beautiful voice, Sally Mann. Does she still sing?

Sally Mann26:23

Bing.

Sally Mann26:23

I think she does, but you know, she doesn't have a lot of time. She's got three children and she's a lawyer in New York City. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Presenter26:32

Yeah.

Presenter26:34

We've talked about two of your children already, Sally, and I'm glad because they became such a feature in your work as your career began to take off. You were mother to three children and you photographed them for the Immediate Family series. Tell me what inspired it?

Sally Mann26:49

Yeah.

Presenter26:50

Yeah.

Presenter26:51

Uh

Sally Mann26:51

Thing?

Sally Mann26:53

The fact that they were there and I didn't have anything else to photograph. I hate to be that sounds so facile. But in fact, I didn't have any help, didn't have childcare, and I had my big 8x10 view camera, and so I just started taking their pictures. And gradually I realized there's this giant narrative of childhood that had pretty much been untapped artistically.

Presenter27:18

Interestingly though, the process you've described as quite a joint endeavour between you and the children, tell me about that. How did it actually work?

Sally Mann27:27

I can't lie. There there were times they didn't want to do it and we didn't do it. Or the pictures didn't turn out right. But mostly they were in tune, in sync with the whole project. They knew what was going on. They looked at the pictures. They were very interested in them. If they didn't like them, we didn't show them. And also they'd come up with ideas. Yeah, I mean they were endlessly inventive, like all children. So uh i we didn't have to look far for the situation or the problem.

Presenter27:50

Oops.

Sally Mann27:51

Yeah.

Sally Mann27:51

Yeah.

Presenter27:51

That work, Sally, has been shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and many other galleries around the world and it's provoked a lot of conversation. It was critically acclaimed, but of course there were people who were uncomfortable with some of the nude photos and the pushback against that was at times very judgmental and kind of harsh. It still is. Yeah, you you were accused of being a bad mother among other things. How did you respond to that?

Sally Mann28:13

Snowa

Sally Mann28:19

Well, I'm not sure very well. In general, I kind of adopted a proof is in the pudding, you know, that children grew up to be great. Emmett had um brain injuries, um but he was great until he um and we'll get to that later I assume um he was hit by a COVID. He was hit by a car when he was seven and that was the beginning of a of a

Presenter28:36

He was hit by a car.

Sally Mann28:41

There was a coiled serpent in his brain that gradually uncoiled. But that was the instigating event. All mothers who get accused of being bad mothers, it's almost indefensible. All you have is whether or not your children turned out okay.

Presenter28:47

Uh

Speaker 128:47

Uh

Presenter28:47

Uh

Speaker 128:47

Uh

Presenter28:58

Can I

Sally Mann28:59

So I was an imperfect mother, like all mothers, but I think they turned out pretty well.

Presenter29:03

And equally, the people who loved those portraits often describe them as being devotional, which, you know, when I look at them, that's what I see: you know, it's a mother's eye. And I think.

Speaker 129:11

Yeah.

Presenter29:14

Part of the complexity of those images that we're just not used to seeing that in art so often. The mother's perspective is not in that way represented very often.

Sally Mann29:21

Represent

Sally Mann29:23

They hadn't been seen before those companies.

Presenter29:24

Friends of pictures.

Presenter29:25

So how did you navigate the balance between capturing such intimate dynamics and also protecting your children's privacy? You mentioned that if they didn't like a a picture, you didn't use it.

Sally Mann29:35

This is what's hard to explain at this juncture, this late date, is that back then.

Sally Mann29:41

I didn't think they were ever really going to be seen. I wasn't a particularly well-known photographer. I wanted to make these images and I thought they might be important, but I didn't think that they would explode on the scene quite the way they did. And they just happened to detonate at exactly the same time that the culture wars, the 1990s culture wars, not the one that we're just beginning to engage in now.

Sally Mann30:06

was surfacing, and so it it became much more problematic than than I thought. There was no Internet back then, so I I just didn't think they were going to be so widely exposed.

Presenter30:13

So

Presenter30:17

They were images that were going to be part of a a series that was in context, actually a small part of a much bigger series for people who were interested in art.

Sally Mann30:26

Yeah, I thought maybe there'd be like fifty other photographers who looked at them like all the all my other pictures, right? I didn't think they would have yeah, I didn't think they'd have so much traction.

Presenter30:33

I didn't think I'd have

Presenter30:36

Yeah.

Presenter30:38

Do you talk about the photos with the kids now? Did you talk to them uh about it about those images and and that backlash as adults?

Sally Mann30:48

I think we're just at the eye-rolling stage at this point, you know.

Sally Mann30:52

They publicly have very emphatically defended them, especially Jessie. She's quite articulate. Privately n we now all of us understand that it's putting us at some risk, just the existence of those pictures.

Presenter31:07

And as you mentioned, earlier this year, some thirty three years on after they were exhibited, some of those images were seized by local officials from a gallery in Texas. How did you react to that news when you heard about it?

Sally Mann31:20

It was shocking. It was really like deja vu. How can this be happening now?

Sally Mann31:26

No art has ever been seized off the walls like that. This is the first.

Sally Mann31:30

And that alone is shocking. I haven't spoken very much about it.

Sally Mann31:35

But I think uh if not now, when? I think now we really need to stand up as artists.

Sally Mann31:41

Amy Sherrard. I'm I'm sure I've got this name wrong, but she's a painter. She did the portrait of um

Sally Mann31:48

Michelle Obama, and she had a show at the Smithsonian scheduled, and they told her she had to take a painting that was offensive to the new white Christian Nationalists out of this show, and she said no and pulled the show. And I think we're gonna see people having to stand up for our rights as artists.

Presenter32:06

And is that a a fight that you've got the energy for, that you're ready for? I'm seventy four years old, my God. It's just yeah, I think I do. All right, Sally. I think it's time to go to your next disc. It's your fifth choice today.

Sally Mann32:20

What are we going to hear? We're going to hear Frank Muller. He's reading a passage from Moby Dick. And not only was he one of the greatest audiobook readers, but Moby Dick is one of the greatest books. And this one passage describes a painting in the Spouter Inn. And I was so taken by the description of the painting because I then envisioned it that it

Sally Mann32:47

I used it as a springboard for my next body of work after the family pictures.

Speaker 232:53

Entering that gable ended spouter inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry, with old fashioned wainscots reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft.

Speaker 233:05

On one side hung a very large oil painting, so thoroughly besmoked and every way defaced, that in the unequal cross lights by which you viewed it it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it and careful inquiry of the neighbours that you could anyway arrive at an understanding of its purpose.

Presenter33:24

Moby Dick by Herman Melville, narrated by Frank Muller, provided with permission of recorded books. You published your fifth book, What Remains, in 2003, and for that book you spent time photographing decomposing human bodies at a forensic anthropology facility. You've written, Sally, that for me, living is the same thing as dying, and loving is the same thing as losing. Tell me more about that.

Sally Mann33:48

More about that.

Sally Mann33:50

Well, anyone who's lived as long as I have knows that you have great loss in your life. And that's just something that I think you can address perhaps obliquely in art. And people have done it for millennia. How do you do it? Tell me about working on that series. The body farm was eye-opening because I was given access. It was really unusual to have such access to all these decomposing bodies in this forensic study facility. And what was shocking and actually a relief was that it didn't horrify me in any way. It felt so natural to see the process of decay. I didn't have a moment where I thought it was repellent or in any way unnatural or grotesque. I worked there for days. Actually, several times I went.

Presenter34:38

And how did making the work there affect you? I I think you made a decision about your own death and your own what would happen to your body afterwards.

Sally Mann34:46

Well, I'm more than happy to donate my body to science, and was even before I went there, but I think it's more important than ever. I will raise one thing which

Sally Mann34:57

Is an interesting idea, and I still don't have the answer to it. But I wonder about the ethics of photographing those bodies. I've been castigated for photographing my children when they supposedly can't give consent. And just talking about those bodies in the body farm, it's an interesting question. How would they feel knowing that they had donated their bodies to science, most of them, but not all, and they had signed a release for photographs, but they didn't sign a release for an art photographer to come in. I still feel a little squidgy about those pictures, not enough so that I renounce them in any way.

Sally Mann35:35

But I'm I do understand that there are complications with that.

Presenter35:39

Were you conscious to protect their identities while photographing them with that in mind, though? I did.

Sally Mann35:42

By the graphic

Sally Mann35:44

I did. There are very few faces in that body of work.

Presenter35:49

Sally, you mentioned losing your son, Emma, and 2016 was when that happened. It was obviously an incredibly difficult time for you.

Presenter35:58

He'd been suffering from schizophrenia and he took his own life. What got you through that experience? How did you survive it?

Sally Mann36:05

Oh, just making work. Every time I have profound grief, I go in the darkroom.

Sally Mann36:12

I go into the art room and I listen to music, which is why it was so hard to pick the songs for this program.

Presenter36:19

Should we hear some music now? This is your sixth choice and and this is Emmett, it's for Emmett. Can we not listen to it? Of course we can not listen to it. Would you mind telling us a bit about it and then we can just drop it in there so you don't have to

Sally Mann36:31

So

Presenter36:32

Um

Sally Mann36:33

Emmett

Sally Mann36:35

As I said, the serpent in his brain remained coiled for a lot of his his life. He was a normal kid and did normal kid things. He he went to boarding school, he went to college.

Sally Mann36:48

He got in little bits of trouble, nothing too serious. But one of the things he was interested in was music. And he got pretty good at the guitar, and he had a band. And, you know, he did the kind of things that young kids do with their garage bands. And I didn't hear him play very often. But this song was on his tablet. And it just moved me so profoundly. He calls it County Seat, and he wrote it and played it. And it's got a lot of wah-wah, a lot of sort of, I mean, I'm not sure, it's not very well produced, but it just moves me a great deal. I love hearing his voice. When do you listen to this? When do you put it on? I'm so embarrassed. I checked to see my most played song on my iTunes, and it's this song. Yeah, but I always cry, so let's not talk about it. I'm going to cry right now.

Speaker 137:39

Yeah.

Sally Mann37:47

What?

Sally Mann37:53

I went down to the county seat I went down to see my sweet beat Where the springs bubbled so effortlessly down at the county seat at the roots of the old oak tree Those springs bubbling so effortlessly Yeah the springs just bubbling so effortlessly Yeah, they're bubbling, bubbling for you and me down at the county seat

Presenter38:15

Your son Emmett Sallyman singing his own song, County Seat.

Presenter38:21

I want to ask about the next book that you created, which was a book of photographs called Proud Flesh. And the subject was your husband Larry. You've been married for fifty-five years, I think you said, and he's always been a subject of yours. But he got a diagnosis of muscular dystrophy, and the series of photographs for the book chart his experience and his illness.

Presenter38:45

What were your feelings going into that project? And what kind of conversations did the two of you have about working on it?

Sally Mann38:52

A very short conversation, which really surprised me. I can't imagine the courage it took for him.

Sally Mann38:58

to say yes.

Sally Mann39:00

But he was, you know, immediately, with alacrity, he said, Oh, yes, let's do it, let's do it. It may have been that we would do it at the end of the day, and we had a little bottle of bourbon, and we'd pour each other, you know, two fingers of bourbon, and we would work, and it was quiet. There's no internet, and there's no phone, and there's a little wood stove down there, and we'd light the stove.

Sally Mann39:24

And we'd wait for it to get warm and we'd have a little bourbon and then we'd take some pictures. And it was just a very, very quiet and powerful time together. But why would he say yes? Here's a man who's six foot four, powerful, was a blacksmith, muscles, trim, lean, handsome.

Speaker 139:33

Not together.

Sally Mann39:44

And then he starts losing all of his muscles. And he loses his biceps and he loses his thighs. He has something called limb girdle. It didn't come on until he was in his forties. And so it's the girdle part is your stomach muscles, so and his back muscles. So

Sally Mann40:04

Most other people would want to hide it. They would be sort of ashamed of the way they look now, especially someone who was once so strong, you know. But not him. He was so willing to expose himself in that way.

Sally Mann40:17

And you said, you know, wh why would he do it? Why why did he do it, do you think? Did you ever find out? You know, s sweetly, because I think he has faith in my artwork.

Sally Mann40:27

The same with my kids. I think they believe in me as an artist, and it's so touching and so ill placed, probably, but it's so touching all of their confidence in my work.

Presenter40:41

Sally, it's time to go to the music. Your seventh choice today. What are we going to hear next?

Sally Mann40:47

Very specific about this one oboist. It's Vivaldi's oboe concerto in C major, R V four five two, the Adagio, and it's performed by Heinz Halliger. It's just so poignant. Wait till you hear it.

Presenter41:49

The adagio from Vivaldi's Obo Concerto in C major, performed by Heinz Holliger and E. Muzici.

Presenter41:56

Sally Mann, we're now in an age where almost everyone has access to a camera. We all carry our phones everywhere we go, don't we? How do you feel about that? And do you ever use the camera on your phone?

Sally Mann42:08

Yes, I use my my phone like everybody else does.

Sally Mann42:11

But I've started taking pictures with a digital camera.

Sally Mann42:15

And it's just coming up to date. It's so great. I'm just loving it. It's so easy. Color is so easy and so much fun. I'm shooting down in the Mississippi Delta where you can't take a bad picture because of the gorgeous lyricism and dreamlike quality of the light down there. It's just so gorgeous.

Speaker 142:18

Though

Speaker 142:36

Let's just

Sally Mann42:38

And I'm doing it in color, and it's I have this funky old lens, and it doesn't handle light very well, so there's this little glow to everything. And what prompted this revelation? I'm in the modern world. Yes, how did it happen? What was the inception point? I had the lens before I had the camera. It's a 1940s old Leica lens. And then this Wizard of Oz moment suddenly makes such a difference. You know, it's so time consuming and laborious to work with an 8x10 view camera, and the film is now so expensive.

Presenter42:49

And I'm in the

Presenter42:51

Yeah.

Presenter43:01

Exactly.

Sally Mann43:11

hate spending that much money on each shot. And so you're always second guessing yourself. You're saying, is that good enough? I mean, is that really worth twelve dollars? But with digital, you just shoot. And if you don't like it, boom, gone, off your computer. Sally, you are so animated.

Speaker 143:13

Mm-hmm.

Presenter43:28

Uh

Sally Mann43:28

You're talking about your new work. Oh, I'm sorry.

Presenter43:28

Excite you're talking about your news. Oh, I'm sorry. I know, I just love that. I'm trying to contain myself. No, don't. Please don't. You know, let it go. We love it. But, you know, you are approaching your mid-70s, still working, still fully engaged. I'm guessing you don't imagine retirement in your future. Oh, no.

Sally Mann43:46

Oh, no, yeah, no. I and I'm a work horse. You know, I'm a peasant. I just put on the harness every day.

Presenter43:53

What advice would you give to aspiring artists listening to this who are at the beginning of their

Sally Mann43:58

Put on the harness every day.

Sally Mann44:00

And pull. Yeah.

Presenter44:01

Uh

Sally Mann44:01

You just have to do it and do it and do it and do it. It's the ten thousand hour.

Presenter44:05

Personal. Do you think about how future generations might interpret your work, Sally? Do you think about legacy, that kind of thing?

Sally Mann44:13

Hmm.

Sally Mann44:15

Not really, although I mean it'd be disingenuous to say every artist thi you know, hopes hopes that history will be kind to them, and I'm no exception, I'm sure.

Presenter44:24

What would you hope that that people

Sally Mann44:26

See in your work or look for in your work. They stop calling me controversial. How's that? It's the adjective that is like always.

Sally Mann44:35

Appended to my name. I don't know. I do hope that the work is viewed in its entirety as a whole, because it's so much more. You know, I don't want to be always known just for the family pictures, right? There's so much more and more to come.

Presenter44:49

Not before your next adventure, which is, of course, casting you away to the desert island, Sally. Okay. What kind of island are you hoping for? Well, I was originally hoping there'd be some dirt.

Sally Mann45:00

Uh

Presenter45:00

Yeah.

Sally Mann45:00

Yeah, that would be nice. What are we talking now? So you could talk. I mean, one of my ideas for your.

Presenter45:03

So you could throw something.

Sally Mann45:09

luxury item would be the Svalbard seed global seed repository. We'll come to that. Okay, no, no, I'm going ahead of myself. But I think some dirt would be a good idea. I'm self-sufficient at home.

Presenter45:14

We'll come to that.

Presenter45:17

But yeah, I think some dirt would be a good

Presenter45:22

Uh And you've lived that way for many years, so I'm guessing you've got lots of skills that will be handy on the desert islands.

Sally Mann45:27

Yeah, oh I'm

Presenter45:27

Great at cutting wood.

Sally Mann45:29

Yeah.

Sally Mann45:29

Yeah.

Presenter45:29

Fantastic at hauling firewood. Yeah, so this is actually going to be a relatively easy experience. What about kind of, you know, building stuff? Could you make a shelter, that kind of thing? I could probably do that.

Sally Mann45:40

That? Yeah, we built our first house last year and I. Yeah.

Presenter45:42

Yeah.

Sally Mann45:44

Yeah, completely. The cinder blocks, the then the wood and the yeah, every sheetrock. Yeah.

Sally Mann45:50

I think you're going to be

Presenter45:50

Okay. What will you miss most about home? I can't bring my dog. No people, no animals, I'm afraid. Oh, well that's what I'll miss. And how will you handle the isolation?

Sally Mann46:00

Oh, I'm used to that. That's going to be the easy part.

Sally Mann46:04

As long as I have something to do.

Sally Mann46:08

I can deal with isolation, I just can't deal with inactivity.

Sally Mann46:11

Yeah.

Presenter46:11

Oh, there'll be plenty to do on the island, I think. And of course you'll have your discs to keep you busy. True.

Presenter46:17

Including this last one one more before we cast you away. Your final choice to day, Sally Mann. What have you gone for?

Sally Mann46:23

It's a singer named Sylvester, I don't know very much about him, and I only know this one song, it's You Are My Friend.

Presenter47:00

Sylvester and you are my friend. Sally Bunn, absolutely transported by that tracker. I have to say, you are just in another place there.

Sally Mann47:04

A tracker half is

Sally Mann47:08

Oh, when those women burst out with that oh, it's so great

Presenter47:12

I'm noticing as well that there are so many live recordings in your discs, like an unusually high number. I think that's really interesting given that you're somebody who loves that kind of you know the spontaneous elements of the work that you do. Maybe that's the way I can have um companionship.

Sally Mann47:27

In the dark room, because that's where I listen to this stuff. You're going to have a lot.

Presenter47:27

And the target

Presenter47:29

You're going to have a lot of

Sally Mann47:31

Of uh crowds on your island. Yeah, that's a good thing.

Presenter47:32

Well, Sally Mann, I'm about to cast you away to your own desert island. You will find the books there, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare waiting for you. You can also have another book of your choice. What would you

Sally Mann47:45

Like. I would take uh Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time, depending on how you translate it by Proust.

Presenter47:54

And why?

Sally Mann47:54

You're there on a desert island and you have very few personal details, obviously, and I think to immerse yourself in a life so richly detailed as he does in that book I've read a third of it.

Sally Mann48:09

Would be a great comfort, right? It's 4,000 pages. Oh, an opposite choice then.

Presenter48:14

Yeah.

Sally Mann48:14

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And he d he's of course a brilliant writer. Like a rally driver. He weaves through the traffic of his ideas and his concepts and his words so fluidly. Well, it's a perfect choice, especially as you've brought money

Presenter48:27

Madeline's for us each day while we have this conversation. I mean, I can't deny you that, the priest.

Sally Mann48:28

Right while we have this going.

Speaker 148:29

Uh

Sally Mann48:29

conversation.

Presenter48:32

It's yours. You can also take a luxury with you, Sally, something to make your time on the island more pleasurable. What will that be?

Sally Mann48:40

I did rule out the small bard global seed repository because I am so tired of gardening.

Sally Mann48:49

Foraging only from here on. Right, yeah. I'm kind of done with gardening. Got it.

Speaker 148:49

Foraging only from here on.

Speaker 148:53

Got it.

Sally Mann48:55

And I've been through a dozen possibilities, but I won't go into them right now. I'm going to say a ream of paper and a pencil. I would listen to the music and write. Perfect. It's your

Presenter49:05

And finally, which track of the eight that you shared with us today would you save from the waves first if you needed to?

Presenter49:13

Oof.

Sally Mann49:14

Uh

Presenter49:14

Uh

Sally Mann49:15

That's a hard one.

Presenter49:16

Yeah.

Sally Mann49:16

I think I'd go for Sylvester. Actually, because of the exuberance and joy and beauty of those voices, I think I would be transported off the island by Sylvester.

Sally Mann49:29

Sally Mann, thank you so much.

Presenter49:30

for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Presenter49:33

Thank you.

Presenter49:48

Hello, it was lovely to chat to Sally and hope she's very happy on her island with her pen and paper to keep her occupied.

Presenter49:55

There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive that you can listen to. We've cast away other photographers, including Eve Arnold, Val Wilmer, and Van Lee Burke. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio manager for today's programme was Bob Nettles. The executive production coordinator was Susie Roylance. The assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky. The content editor was Mugabe Turia, and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Join me next time when my guest will be the computer scientist, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Speaker 150:53

I'm Ragnar O'Connor from BBC Radio 4 and the History Podcast. This is the Magnificent O'Connor's.

Speaker 151:01

In war torn London a man is murdered

Speaker 151:05

The police arrest twenty three year old Jimmy O'Connor.

Speaker 151:10

He's sentenced to death, but Jimmy is my dad.

Speaker 151:14

For eighty years, my family has fought to prove his innocence, and now we're making one final attempt to uncover the truth. But are we ready for what we'll find?

Speaker 151:26

The Magnificent O'Connors. Listen first on BBC Sounds.