"If I could be said to have any kind of aesthetic,
it’s sort of a magpie aesthetic—I just go and
I pick up whatever is around."
"...If it doesn’t have ambiguity, don’t bother
to take it. I love that, that aspect of photography—the
mendacity of photography—it’s got to have some
kind of peculiarity in it or it’s not interesting to
me."
If I could be said to have any
kind of aesthetic, it’s sort of a magpie aesthetic—I
just go and I pick up whatever is around. If you think about
it, the children were there, so I took pictures of my children.
It’s not that I’m interested in children that much
or photographing them—it’s just that they were there,
and it’s the same with dog bones. I just had dozens of
dog bones all over my living room floor, so I photographed
them. In fact, I was sort of looking at those dowels over
there and thinking, “You know, I bet I could make a good
picture out of that pile of dowels.”
It’s just this sort of little magpie thing—that
something will catch my eye and I’ll go for it. They
don’t have any real meaning; it’s just that they
have an allure somehow. The texture and all that stuff that
catches your eye, I guess. That leads us into a segue for
something we probably don’t need to get into now, but
there’s something about the way I approach photography
which is very spontaneous. I mean, I see a dog bone, I bring
it in, I take a picture, I like the picture, I’ll show
you the first picture I took. I thought “Hey, that’s
a pretty good picture.” So then I go collect all the
other dog bones and I bring them in and I take a few more
pictures and then I put them on the wall. And then, before
long, the gallery says, “Well, let’s do a show of
dog bones.” So we do a show of dog bones, and then some
cynical postmodern critic will come along and say, “Oh
my god, look at the show of dog bones; what do you suppose
it means?” And it means that I want to see what dog bones
look like photographed.
The same thing happened with the pictures of the children:
they were just photographs of my children doing what children
do, and they got layered with all of this, often absurd, psychological
stuff. You know, these sort of guys sitting around in Yale
stroking their beards with their little leather coated jackets
saying, “Well, it must mean this...” It means that
I was a mother taking pictures of my children. Anyway, I’m
just taking pictures of dog bones.
ART:21:
Can you talk about the use of
ordinary objects in the history of photography?
MANN:
I keep thinking of Irving Penn
and those cigarette butts he did. They’re enough like
those pictures that I’m a little daunted in this pursuit.
When they go up on the wall, I can see all those critics saying
“Oh yes, but Irving Penn did this fifteen years ago.
Why is she even bothering?”
ART:21:
Is there anyone else who has
specifically influenced this series of photographs?
MANN:
I look at a lot of people’s
work. I mean, I’m a shameless borrower. But in this case,
it happened so spontaneously that I didn’t actually say
“Oh, maybe I’ll take a picture just like that Irving
Penn I remember being so good.” These dog bones are just
making art the way art should be made, I think, without any
overarching reference. Just for fun, if you can imagine that.
Art for fun. Sometimes it is fun.
ART:21:
What do these dog bone prints
remind you of?
MANN:
Actually, what I like about these
dog bones is their ambiguity, because you can’t tell
what size they are. First of all, you don’t know what
they are. And second of all, they almost look like big massive
carved stones. You know, if it doesn’t have ambiguity,
don’t bother to take it. I love that, that aspect of
photography—the mendacity of photography—it’s
got to have some kind of peculiarity in it or it’s not
interesting to me. I have to admit, the dog bones in the pictures
look so massive—they look like Stonehenge or something
sitting there—so it takes you a while to figure out what
they are, or maybe you don’t figure it out. I guess unless
you come in here, you don’t. So maybe they’ll think
I’m photographing Brancusi sculptures.
ART:21:
Is there anything else about
your photographic process
that you would like to add?
MANN:
You mean the moment that’s
just enough time to make your quick prayer? There is something
about this process, and about the whole 8 by 10 business,
that takes it out of the arena of the snapshot, even though,
of course, I’m always desperate for that feeling. I wanted
those family pictures to look effortless. I wanted them to
look like snapshots. And some of them did. My most successful
pictures—I can show you which ones—I think work
the best are the ones that just look like they were taken
with a 35 millimeter, but it’s a process and there’s
a reverence that goes along with it—that you have to
pay your dues to the photo gods, I guess. But there is a kind
of reverence that goes along with doing this process. Of course
it has all that vestigial stuff that goes with it. I mean,
you can’t do this without thinking “Oh, Carlton
Watkins and all those men in their wagon trains pulled by
mules out there in the blistering heat with no running water.”
Maybe the gods that you’re paying reverence to are those.
The ones that preceded you, because it’s an extraordinarily
difficult process in the field.
