While in Washington this weekend, I stopped in at the Sally Mann show (see Colette Copeland’s post) at the Corcoran. I just want to add that the photos that I found most beautiful and interesting in that series were the ones of people long dead. The ones in which the skin is still a skin around something inside were hard to look at and seemed like immodest transgressions–a defiling of people who had no say in the matter.
The children’s faces, on the other hand, seemed pointless, even in the context of life vs. death. There’s some kind of self-justification going on in the thinking here, and I’m not sure it’s a pretty picture.
But in terms of what’s light, dark, clear, fuzzy, random, etc., some of the prints in this show were quite engaging, and the plates were wonderful in their three-dimensionality and metalic sheen.
But all in all, I wanted to see less of what I was looking at, not more.
