Larry Mann by Sally Mann

Originally published in The New Yorker's Sept. 21, 2009 issue:

Family of Mann by Vince Aletti

"Although Sally Mann’s husband, Larry, made occasional appearances in “Immediate Family,” the photographs that made her famous, he played a supporting role to the three uninhibited children cavorting at center stage. But he’s the sole focus of Mann’s new show at Gagosian’s Madison Avenue gallery—a series of nude studies that regard the strength and fragility of the aging male body with extraordinary tenderness. “I look with both ardor and frank, aesthetic, cold appraisal,” Mann writes. The process may be intimate and collaborative, but the pictures are hers alone. Larry’s head is rarely seen; it’s his body that Sally details bit by bit, in photographs that look like nineteenth-century relics. She exaggerates the imperfections of the antique glass-plate process until the surfaces of her images suggest flayed, eroded, or pockmarked flesh. Larry’s body, though worn down by muscular dystrophy, remains sturdy and broad. Appearing in fragments, he’s as magnificent as shards of Greek statuary, and all the more heroic for his vulnerability."

I had the pleasure of meeting Sally and Larry Mann at their Three Graces farm in Virginia in 2003. I was there as a photo assistant helping out my then boss Bruce Davidson who was on assignment from Newsweek to shoot a portrait of Mrs. Mann. Upon our arrival, Larry rode up to us on horseback as Sally made her way from the house surrounded by greyhounds. After the shoot, they cooked us dinner and we sat out on their porch eating venison and drinking what even what my uncultured 23-year-old palate could tell was really good wine. They are a magical couple, and I'll always be grateful I got to tag along on that hot summer day.

Portrait of Larry by Sally Mann from 1977