Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings is going to Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Paris, and Salem, Massachusetts, after a successful three-month run at the National Gallery of Art. (Please see tour dates below.*)
If you missed the big exhibition in Washington, here are a few photos from the show organized by the National Gallery and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.
The title for the presentation comes from a poem by John Glenday, "Landscape with Flying Man" with this line: "The soul makes a thousand crossings, the heart, just one."**
Despite appearances in the scene above, it was not spontaneous but rehearsed numerous times, until Sally Mann could get it just right , according to the label copy. In the picture her daughter, Jessie, wears a white Easter dress worn by Sally Mann and her grandmother, Jessie's namesake.
It's a really big show, about 110 photographs taken by Ms. Mann of her beloved South and its complexities, beauty, hauntings, and landscapes which her cult adores and who filled the galleries every time I went to the National Gallery which explains why I was never able to get a seat to see the continuously running film about her at work.
This is all (above) that remains of the Windsor Mansion, the largest antebellum Greek Revival house in Mississippi. Built between 1859 and 1861, it had four stories, 25 rooms, 25 fireplaces, and a basement with a school room, dairy, and supply rooms. It is likely that Union troops did not torch it in the Civil War, as they did so many others, because they used it as a hospital.
After the war, Mark Twain stood in Windsor's observatory and viewed the Mississippi River, observations he used in Life on the Mississippi. Later, when a guest dropped a cigarette in the house on the afternoon of February 3, 1890, the ensuing fire and flames burned it to the ground.
Windsor Mansion has been the set of several movies, including Raintree County (1957) with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Cliff. See it today on Highway 552, 12 miles from Port Gibson, Mississippi.
The battle of Cold Harbor (above) was fought in 1864 ten miles from Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy.
The exhibition spanned several galleries and was divided by five themes: Family, The Land, Last Measure, Abide with Me, and What Remains. I find Mann's photographs neither inspirational nor uplifting and they speak of a languid, bygone era which no longer exists, save the sad landscapes which continue to wither.
A friend in Blacksburg asked me if the show was, she paused before she said "depressing," we both, familiar with Mann's typical subject matter. Yes, I said, and bleak, like they usually are.
Or, that's how they strike me. How do they strike you? Perhaps, it's the black and whiteness. But for the younger generation, and heavens know, that's the only market (!) for everything, it's what they seem to want, a reflection of their existence.
*Tour dates are:
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, June 30 - Sept. 23, 2018
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Nov. 20 - Feb. 10, 2019
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Mar. 3 - May 27, 2019
Jeu de Paume, Paris, June 17 - Sept. 22, 2019
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Oct. 19, 2019 - Jan. 12, 2020.
A catalogue with 320 pages and 230 illustrations is on sale for $45 at the National Gallery of Art.
Audio and video of the show with interviews are available at the National Gallery's website.
**"Landscape with Flying Man"
I read about him that was given wings.
His father fixed those wings to carry him away.
They carried him halfway home, and then he fell.
And he fell not because he flew
but because he loved it so. You see
it's neither pride, nor gravity but love
that pulls us back down to the world.
Love furnishes the wings, and that same love
will watch over us as we drown.
The soul makes a thousand crossings, the heart, just one.
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