© Sally Mann, Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery
On view
Cross-Collections Gallery
Was Ever Love,
2009
Sally Mann, born 1951, Lexington, VA; active Lexington
2019-136
Was Ever Love depicts the artist’s husband, Larry, in profile as he lies on a bed, deep shadows covering his closed eyes. The effect is evocative of the Victorian tradition of the postmortem photograph, in which the dead were often posed formally, as if in sleep, to allow loved ones a final image and memory of the departed. This association is heightened by Mann’s choice of the wet collodion process, a nineteenth-century method of producing negatives that is notoriously difficult to control and is responsible for the deliberate imperfections on the photograph’s surface.
More About This Object
Information
Title
Was Ever Love
Dates
2009
Maker
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
image: 37.8 × 34 cm (14 7/8 × 13 3/8 in.)
sheet: 50.4 × 47.7 cm (19 13/16 × 18 3/4 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Kathleen Compton Sherrerd Fund for Acquisitions in American Art
Object Number
2019-136
Place Made
North America, United States, Virginia
Signatures
Signed, dated; titled, and edition in graphite, on verso: Sally Mann, 2009
Culture
Techniques
The artist; [Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, NY]; purchased by the Princeton University Art Museum, 2019.
