Unlike Ansel Adams, she is not meticulously rendering the majestic for future generations. The pictures of her children-swimming in the Maury River, playing in grassy pastures-and the moody landscapes she took around her farm later on share a chimerical quality. Mann’s life and career have been dedicated in large part to peering closely at this place, its history, its inhabitants, and its beauty. “That’s the critical thing about the family pictures,” Mann writes, “they were only possible because of the farm, the place.” When, on the occasion of Mann’s fortieth wedding anniversary, her daughter credited “the farm” in Lexington, Virginia as a pillar of her parents’ marriage, Mann notes, “How odd it is that a piece of land should figure so prominently into her concept of our marriage, and yet how perceptive and accurate that observation is.” In her new autobiography, Hold Still: A Memoir With Photographs, Mann says that it was never really all about the kids.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |