Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit

Text by John Ravenal, David Levi Strauss, Anne Wilkes Tucker.

Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit is the first in-depth exploration of this world-renowned artist's approach to the body. Throughout her career, Mann has fearlessly pushed her exploration of the human form, tackling often difficult subject matter and making unapologetically sensual images that are simultaneously bold and lyrical. This beautifully produced publication includes Mann's earliest platinum prints from the late 1970s, Polaroid still lifes, early color work of her children, haunting landscape images, recent self-portraits and nude studies of her husband. These series document Mann's interest in the body as principal subject, with the associated issues of vulnerability and mortality lending an elegiac note to her images. In bringing them together, author and curator John Ravenal examines the varied ways in which Mann's experimental approach, including ambrotypes and gelatin-silver prints made from collodian wet-plate negatives, moves her subjects from the corporeal to the ethereal. Ravenal also supplies a comprehensive introduction as well as individual entries on each series, and essays by David Levi Strauss ("Eros, Psyche, and the Mendacity of Photography") and Anne Wilkes Tucker ("Living Memory") add different, but equally illuminating perspectives to this work. Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit is a must for any serious library of photographic literature, students, scholars, collectors and others interested in her work.
Sally Mann (born 1951) is one of America's most renowned photographers. She has received numerous awards, including NEA, NEH, and Guggenheim Foundation grants, and her work is held by major institutions internationally. Mann's many books include What Remains (2003), Deep South (2005), and the Aperture titles At Twelve (1988), Immediate Family (1992), Still Time (1994) and Proud Flesh (2009). She lives in Lexington, Virginia.

Featured image is from Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit, published by Aperture with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

★ Annie Liebovitz ★

Annie Liebovitz is one of the best photographers in the world. There are several, of course, but not so many you couldn't count them on your both hands. She is one of those ten fingers, that's for sure.

Photography has become so major that is part of everyone's everyday lives. But still, the top photographers just simply stand out and you can recognize them immediately. 

Annie Liebovitz shoots Charlize Theron....Here's a video of how she photographs Charlize Theron for the Vanity Fair.

...And here's one with Meryl Streep :)

Annie Leibovitz was born on October 2, 1949, in Waterbury, Connecticut. While studying painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, she took night classes in photography, and in 1970, she began doing work for Rolling Stone magazine. She became Rolling Stone’s chief photographer in 1973. By the time she left the magazine, 10 years later, she had shot 142 covers. In 1983, she joined the staff at Vanity Fair, and in 1998, she also began working for Vogue. In addition to her magazine editorial work, Leibovitz has created influential advertising campaigns for American Express and the Gap and has contributed frequently to the Got Milk? campaign. She has worked with many arts organizations, including American Ballet Theatre, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Mark Morris Dance Group, and with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Her books include Annie Leibovitz: Photographs (1983), Photographs: Annie Leibovitz 1970–1990 (1991), Olympic Portraits (1996), Women (1999), American Music (2003), A Photographer’s Life: 1990–2005 (2006), and Annie Leibovitz at Work (2008). Exhibitions of her images have appeared at museums and galleries all over the world, including the National Portrait Gallery and the Corcoran Gallery, in Washington, D.C.; the International Center of Photography, in New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; the Centre National de la Photographie, in Paris; and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Leibovitz has been designated a Living Legend by the Library of Congress and is the recipient of many other honors, including the Barnard College Medal of Distinction and the Infinity Award in Applied Photography from the International Center of Photography. She was decorated a Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. She lives in New York with her three children, Sarah, Susan, and Samuelle.