Sally Mann

Sally Mann is a photographer who specialises in black and white photography. She created a series of photographs titled What Remains 2003 which explore the idea of loss.

"Death is powerful," says Mann. "It's perhaps best approached as a springboard to appreciate life more fully. That's why this show ends with pictures of living people, pictures of my children. This whole body of work is a process of thanksgiving."

She caused controversy by photographing a range of bodies and documented the process of decomposition at a forensic study site.

These images ask the viewer philosophical questions and tries to make sense of what happens as life ceases to be, and what remains after? Mann explores this through the physical viewing of the act of decomposition, but the questions are further explored through subsequent images which include photographs of landscapes which were once locations for battles such as the Civil War, and a set of extreme close up images of children's faces peering out at the viewer through a fog/haze.

Mann also uses the collodion process, a 19th century photographic process which is highly dangerous, as chemicals such a cyanide are required in order to create the sepecific qualities rendered in the photographs.