Sally Mann

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collaborated with Aperture Foundation to produce a new collection of Sally Mann's photographs: The Flesh and the Spirit. The book documents a 2010 exhibition at the museum.






The work on display dated back to the 1970s and extended up to the present. Clearly it was chosen with the broad intention of stressing the vulnerability of the human body – the body aging, ill, even dead. Mann's own family posed most frequently, as in the sequence with her husband (above) first published in Proud Flesh of 2009.


The grouped self portraits above are from 2006-7. These are ambrotypes, "unique collodian wet-plate positives on black glass" – popular photo-technology around the time of the American Civil War.



Below, the artist photographed during the installation process at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in front of two of the pieces shown here.

Ivan Vasiliev

Ivan Vasiliev has received enough attention lately to generate many videos.

This clip is not the best, but was shot from the wings – it goes some way toward stripping away the illusion of effortlessness that all successful dancers project.

 At 21, Vasiliev is already a Bolshoi star. And only beginning to tour outside Russia.

Foyer

Whenever we pass through the foyer of the building, Mabel lifts her voice. She says "Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah!" because she likes to hear the echo created between the stone-tiled floor and the vaulted ceiling. The mirror is there so that people can make sure they look ok before they go outside. We make full use of it every day before our walk to the park.

Inanimate Inhabitants

The kitchen, the seashore, the office. And the toy box, of course. The green backgrounds have now exhausted their potential, it is clear, and when I return to take up my post with Mabel next Monday, I intend to recycle the battered poster-board that made these homely nap-time dream-visions possible.

Polaroid Fortnight

Polaroid picture-taking can improve, while remaining unpredictable. My daughter is proof of this fact.  

Two Explorations

Every day for Mabel is a series of investigations. A pair of sequences from today show her (first) coming to a satisfactory understanding of a plastic shopping bag bigger than herself, and (second) rifling her toy box in an ultimately successful effort to locate one of her favorite possessions, a big black plastic buckle – which she played with and chewed on all the rest of the day.