Sally Mann + The Myth of Creative Genius

Sally Mann and her 8x10 View Camera // Photo by Kim Rushing

"Art is seldom the result of true genius; rather, it is the product of hard work and skills learned and tenaciously practiced by regular people.” - Sally Mann

"Does photography interest you at all?"

This is what the kind woman at the admissions office in the art department asked me after telling me that I had been rejected from the University Of Utah's graphic design program. Bad grades was what I heard, but surely it was more polite than that. She offered some courses of action and photography was one of them. You just needed some eyes, or maybe just one good eye. I had been through the two-year art foundation program already and knew I didn't have the chops for painting and drawing, although I loved them. The truth was; I had no idea if photography interested me. I had no idea what interested me at all. It was 1997 and thinking about it now, all my interests at that time had been marginalized or pre-determined and the things I loved or would come to love weren't something you could build a life with. I knew my father had flirted with photography (and many other artistic ambitions) before nineties conservative talk radio fried his brain, but life as a photographer was so nebulous. Graphic design could earn you a living. But, photography? I had no idea what to do, and quitting school would have killed my already disappointed parents. So, I absconded with my father's dusty old Canon FTb, enrolled in the program and unwittingly started my journey and lifelong love affair with photography.

There were so many impressions on my young soul in that building. I loved it immediately. The darkroom, my professors, my peers. I was in love with everyone. It was the first time I was surrounded by such delightful weirdness, and for the very first time had an inkling and unfamiliar sense of belonging. I can still remember the feeling of being in that building late at night and the smell and sounds of things being made. Not just photographs. Thinners. Kilns. Paints. Body odor. All of it, so alive. People learning how to make things. How to paint things. How to print things. How to fire things.

Most importantly, for me ... learning how to see things.

Candy Cigarette / Sally Mann / Immediate Family 1989

There were so many artists at that time that just absolutely blew the doors open, but a handful that really kicked those doors off their hinges. Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, and Nan Goldin sparked early, and over time I came to know and love the work of Mary Ellen Mark, Eugene Smith & William Eggleston. But Sally Mann absolutely set my brain on fire. There was something in her work that resonated in the deepest parts of my being. The photograph above; Sally Mann's 'Candy Cigarette' (1989) stopped time for me when I initially saw it via slide projector. I am prone to hyperbole from time to time, but I remember sitting on that metal stool in the dark of that photography lecture, and just being slack-jawed and stunned.

Stunned. Shaken. Stirred. Capital F, Fucked-Up.

The funny thing? I would have had no reference point for why it shook me, or what I was even seeing that made my whole body stand upright. It would be years before I would know that her work in the early nineties had sent the art world reeling and the collective christian right losing their shit and calling for her work to be banned for exploitation and pornographic depictions of her own children.

The Last Time Emmett Modeled Nude / 1987 Via Houk Gallery

Photographs from Immediate Family // Sally Mann

There was something monumental in these photographs. It's taken me nearly two decades to understand why Sally Mann and her work meant something deeper to me.

The great irony of this story is that I have spent most of my adult life working as a graphic designer (TAKE THAT UofU GRAPHIC DESIGN PROGRAM!). I started working in advertising (GASP!) right out of college and, although, I always loved and stayed connected to photography. I would only shoot periodically, dropping the film at a lab. I never felt connected to digital cameras, and while I would take photographs on my phone it just wasn't the same thing. Then, through a series of mystical events and some beautiful people the synapses fired up again.

In 2016 a friend of mine who was installing exhibits at the Utah Museum of Modern Art called me to say they were cleaning out the darkroom that had gone unused for about a decade. He asked if I wanted to come in and take a look and see if there was anything that interested me. I had been in that darkroom so many times during school. It was so much nicer than the one at the U, and 5 bucks an hour to use their equipment and chemistry was a steal. I was shocked on entering it so many years later that everything was exaclty the same, just a little dustier. My friend asked me what I wanted. Unsure about the cost I put some sticky notes on the things I wanted ... two enlargers, two timers, four big trays, two focusers and four printing easels. A day later he called me and asked "how does a two-hundred and fifty dollar donation to the museum sound?' Good grief. I should have asked for it all.

I hadn't worked in a darkroom in nearly fifteen years.

My dear friend, Nick, helped me put up some new walls and install some lights. We found a sink in the local classifieds. Ran some new plumbing. I ordered some chemisty online and was printing by the weekend. It was so thrilling. I had forgotten what it felt like to hold negatives to the light after pulling them from the development tanks. I was smitten all over again. The mysterious process of watching things appear in silver and being endlessly frustrated when something was missing. Blasted focus.

My Beloved Darkroom in Salt Lake City

I started shooting a lot. Everywhere I went. I bought a few new cameras to experiment with, and looked for things to enliven and propel me. I even tried to start a photography club in Salt Lake to start some kind of fire. I came to understand that with photography, it was the entire process that drew me in. I love taking photographs, but it really wasn't that I loved that act independently. What I understand now, better than I ever have, is that I am drawn to the whole of the process of making photographs. Not the subject or the final print, but everything. Take out any step, and it loses a bit of it's magic. Whether I am making photographs or making recods, I've realized that the way things are made, or how they are made are as important to me as what is made, and that's really the only reason I want to make things now. How I want to do it. How I love doing it. And rediscovering that in my forties feels like a gift.

In the middle of this rekindling and illumination, and knowing of my love and admiration for Ms. Mann, a beloved friend gifted me a copy of her book 'Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs.' I couldn't put it down and read the whole of it in a single weekend. Page after page I started to have a deepening feeling that some kind of circuit was being completed. That I was reconnecting with some kind of essential truth, or rhythm of being and making things. It felt like a master giving away the store.

And then, like Joe Frazier ...

'Every time it’s the same. It’s easy to prove to myself that good pictures are elusive, but I can never quite believe they’re also inevitable. It would be a lot easier for me to believe they were if I also believed that they came as a result of my obvious talent, that I was extraordinary in some way. Artists go out of their way to reinforce the perception that good art is made by singular people, people with an exceptional gift. But I don’t believe I am that exceptional, so what is this that I’m making?'

And instantly I understood something brand new. Like an unlocked a door I hadn't noticed in my own house. There I sat in the same slack-jawed stupor as I had twenty years earlier. My friend, and often unwitting mentor, Joe Henry has said that we influence the past as much as it influences us. I know that in reimagining our stories we attach different significance to different moments to help us make sense of our present situation, but in thinking about this all weekend, I really believe that Sally Mann lit me up in my twenties because I'd need that illumination desperately when I was in my forties when all I do is want to give up because my time is past.

If Sally Mann isn't exceptional, who is?

What does that make me? Ugh.

Here was one of the masters laying out simple truth. If you want to be great at something, you have to do it. Over and over and over and over again. And a lot of that time is flailing and failing with no end in sight. But you gotta keep trying, and that's what the masters do and that's why they are great. They show up when they want to give up. Henri Cartier-Bresson said: 'Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst' and I think I am somewhere in the low end of the space between zero and ten-thousand. That's a lot of worst left, and it can be daunting and endlessly frustrating but what is the option? Give up? Give in? Find something easier?

Ugh. I know.

Then she continues with this hammer:

'That's the way it sometimes goes for me: I start on a new series of pictures and right away, in some kind of perverse bait-and-switch, I get a good one. This freak of a good picture inevitably inspires a cocky confidence, making me think this new project will be a stroll in the park. But, then, after sometimes two or three more good ones, the next dozen are duds, and that cavalier stroll becomes an uphill slog. It isn't long before I have to take a breather, having reached the first significant plateau of doubt and lightweight despair. The voice of that despair suggests seducingly to me that I should give it up, that I'm a phony, that I've made all the good pictures I'm ever going to, and I have nothing more worth saying.

That voice is easy to believe, and, as photographer and essayist (and my early mentor) Ted Orland has noted, it leaves me with only two choices: I can resume the slog and take more pictures, thereby risking further failure and despair, or I can guarantee failure and despair by not making more pictures. It's essentially a decision between uncertainty and certainty and, curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.'

Risking failure or guarantee it? Resume the slog? Uncertainty is the comforting choice?

Good lord.

If Sally Mann thinks she is a phony, what am I?

Is this reassuring or devastating?

Somedays both. Most days devastating. Few days reassuring.

Ugh.

It's difficult, in this present moment, to come to grips with the origin and confluence of the many rivers that have weathered and shaped me. Like many of you, this pandemic time has sent me plunging the depths of my psyche, and trying to understand and unlearn many of the myths of my family, my religion and what it means to make things and seek out beauty in a culture that values visibility, efficiency and productivity above all. Everything needs a metric and it's almost always financial. Why can't you paint just because want to paint? Is your time past to write poetry? Is your record worth making if no one hears it?

And the myths? That art is made by people who possess something that you do not. That they never feel insecure or terrible or that the things we make aren't meaningful or beautiful or essential or any of the garbage that we submarine ourselves with. That we can't make things unless we (or they) are perfect, or have an Etsy store or an Instagram feed where we can be showered with love and compliments that will validate and embolden us. Everything we make has to be a step on some path to eternal artistic glory. 'The next album is going to be the one that breaks everything open' or 'this is going to be the screenplay or novel that puts me over the top.' The myth that you are not interesting or meaningful. The myth that the way you see is not unique. The myth that we don't need your view of the world or tell us how beautiful or full of pain you are. The myth that you're not good enough.

“Maybe you’ve made something mediocre—there’s plenty of that in any artist’s cabinets—but something mediocre is better than nothing, and often the near-misses, as I call them, are the beckoning hands that bring you to perfection just around the blind corner.”

That's it. The only thing that matters is to keep trying. Keep trying to make beautiful things. Risk failure or guarantee it. Please risk it. We all need it.

Woman Pointing at The Getty / Los Angeles, January 19, 2019 / Silver Gelatin Print / Ryan Tanner

I was lucky enough to be in Los Angeles during the winter of 2019 and finally got to see Sally Mann's photographs in person during her exhibition 'Thousand Crossings' at the Getty Museum. It was such an overwhelming experience, and spent hours in a total haze wandering through those sacred halls. I cried quite a bit and got to experience my partner and children seeing that work for their first time and telling them what it meant to me. All those photographs I had only seen online and in photobooks. I was grateful to be there. Grateful for Sally Mann and a life dedicated to looking and understanding the complicated stories and places we come from. We sat on the grass in the beautiful sunshine and watched our kids explore the grounds. I took some photographs and felt like something warm and transformative was happening.

I remembered that day sitting on the stool in the dark of that room. Seeing things that I could not even begin to understand, but knowing that something essential was being communicated. That twenty years later I would need the reassurance of a wise, kind master ... The reassurance that she feels the same things as me and that I should keep trying.

To keep looking. To keep going.

'The hardest part is setting the camera on the tripod, or making the decision to bring the camera out of the car, or just raising the camera to your face, believing, by those actions, that whatever you find before you, whatever you find there, is going to be good.'

Turns out. Photography interests me quite a bit, and it's filled my life with incalculable beauty.

Thank you Sally.