Mid-week Masters: Sally Mann

Sally Mann doesn't know it, but her work owns a part of my soul. Dark and beautiful, with a sense of being closed off from the rest of the world. Her earlier work of her children was a huge inspiration for my own work in art school and a chunk of my thesis was dedicated to her. I didn't work in photography then, but themes in her work and the controversy raised by her depiction of children was intriguing to me. Now her children are all grown and her work is focused more on portraiture and Southern landscapes, but the beautiful, eerie darkness has only deepened.

These photos are from her Deep South series. She uses a 100-year-old 8 x 10 bellows view camera and looks for cracked and flawed lenses to capture the light leaks and blurs that make her photos so gorgeous.

Also more images and information here