ODALISQUE Magazine

Today I´ve been working all day and afterwards I took a walk around town, ending up at Fotografiska, a museum of photography. My feet are killing me! Anyway, went there to see Sally Mann who I absolutely adore, but I must admit it was the quickest museum visit ever! The exhibition was so much smaller then I had expected and I was a bit disappointed. It was really fantastic though to see her series of portraits of her sick husband that is suffering from a muscle disease. Strong, emotional portraits, that really moved me. The one thing thaht makes Mann stand out for me is this courage to photograph and to see the things in life that is uncomfortable, painful and tabu. She captures it in a close and personal way but with self distance. I wrote one of my biggest essays in school about her series of pictures of her children, Immediate family, where this fragile and innocent yet provocative way of her portraying created a big debate in the US in the beginning of the 90´s. The discussion was of course mostly about the fact that the children often were naked in the pictures, but I think the staging of the children was another key factor. The staging was making them aware of them self and their body´s but also making Sally Mann, the children´s mom, the director of this revealing and apparently provocative act.