Sally Mann`s Twenty-First Century Hephaestus

Reception Paper 2
26 October 2012
Lauren Bledsoe
ClCv241.002
Sally Mann’s Twenty-First Century Hephaestus
A Photographic Commemoration of Spiritual Triumph & Marital Love
Sally Mann is not afraid of looking. Furthermore, she is not afraid of recording what she looks at.
Having risen to prominence in the early 1990’s after the release of Immediate Family, a book of
controversially intimate photographs of her children summering on a lake at their family cabin in rural
Virginia, Mann has recently turned her focus away from her children and toward her husband, Larry
Mann. The new series, released by Aperture in 2009 and entitled Proud Flesh, depicts the decay and
atrophy of Mann’s most personal hero: her husband. Larry Mann suffers from muscular dystrophy, a
disease which is progressively weakening his left arm and right leg, and the photographs show a man in
a degenerated state, presenting the figure of Mann’s fallen hero. However, Mann employs the Greek
myth of Hephaestus in order to infuse her photograph with the symbolic weight of contradiction and
universal relevance, ultimately serving to illustrate her husband’s god-like nature even in his
degeneration.
The featured photograph in Proud Flesh is titled “Hephaestus.” While Mann overtly references
the myth in the picture’s title, Mann’s language regarding photography virtually constantly references
her affinity for Greek mythology. In an essay about Proud Flesh, Mann employs the myth of Psyche to
impart the controversial nature of being a female artist who looks at a male subject: “Within traditional
narratives, women who look, especially women who look unflinchingly at men, have been punished.
Take poor Psyche, punished for all time for daring to lift the lantern to finally see her lover.”1 In the
same essay, she references Prometheus when writing about the ethical dilemmas posed by this body of
work: “The gods might reasonably have slapped this particular lantern out of my raised hand, for before
me lay a man as naked and vulnerable as any wretch strung across the mythical, vulture-topped rock.”
Mann also declared in an interview that “susceptibility to myth” is a defining characteristic of most
Southern artists.2 Thus, Mann is acutely aware of Greek mythology and consciously engages with it.
Mann’s use of the Hephaestus myth in particular can be seen as directly symbolic of the
particulars of her life. Her husband is a blacksmith. Hephaestus is also an iron-worker, whom according
to Hesiod is “skilled in crafts more than all the sons of Heaven" (Hesiod, Theogony 924-929). In
addition, according to Homer, Hephaestus is “lame from birth” (Homer, Odyssey VIII, 126). Muscular
dystrophy is a genetic condition, and though it did not manifest itself until late in his life, Larry Mann’s
illness is also something he was born with. Thus, in both occupation and physical condition, Larry Mann
is a concrete symbol of Hephaestus. Furthermore, Hephaestus is by nature a contradictory god, as he is
both immortal yet physically imperfect, even deformed, unlike any other Greek god. Such contradiction
is distinctly present in Larry as well, and by invoking the mythic presence of Hephaestus in her
photograph, Mann fleshes out the symbolic nature of being paradoxically both fiercely strong and
physically afflicted.
Sally Mann “Sally Mann: Proud Flesh” Conscientious, August 19th, 2009. URL: http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/2009/08/
sally_mann_proud_flesh/ accessed October 26th, 2012.
1
2
“Marital Trust,” What Remains, directed by Steven Cantor (2005; USA, Zeitgeist Films, 2008), DVD.
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Mann’s own personal narrative about meeting her husband is mythic in tone and content, and as
Mann’s husband is the subject of “Hephaestus,” this story serves to display the physical height from
which he has fallen in the photograph. “I met Larry when I was eighteen,” Mann said, “The flood of
1969 just almost leveled the [family] cabin, and in the process it deposited this huge stone five or six
feet from the front door of the cabin, [it was] just mammoth, and my father needed some help moving
the stone. So he called up my then-boyfriend, Cee Turner, and said ‘Do you know anyone who could
help me lift this stone?’ and he said ‘I know just the person.’ So he brought Larry out, and Larry reached
down, lifted the stone by himself, put it up on his back and moved it as if it was effortless for him. Cee
Turner told me that at that moment he knew I was going to marry Larry Mann.”3
In this story, Larry wins female affection in a conventional narrative of overt display of
masculinity, manifest through brute strength and physical prowess. As such, his current ever-weakening
physical condition from muscular dystrophy provides a palpable tension between Mann and her subject:
what first attracted her to him is slowly ebbing away. Indeed, Mann is hyper-aware of this paradox when
she wrote “Larry bears, with his trademark god-like nobility, the further affliction of a late-onset
muscular dystrophy.”4 Mann uses the allusion to Hephaestus in order to emphasize her belief that he is
still “god-like,” though he may have fallen from a Heracles figure to that of Hephaestus. In spite of this
fall, however, the photograph is a testament of Mann’s reverential love for her husband as much as it is a
physical display of one man’s personal strength and dignity while wasting away.
While all of the pictures in Proud Flesh are nude studies of Larry Mann’s form, “Hephaestus” is
a significant departure from the other photographs, which often display Larry lying on a dirty, worn-in
cot. The scenes are eery and often reminiscent of a concentration camp, especially given Larry’s
withering frame and the ascetic, gloomy setting. However, in “Hephaestus,” Larry is standing proudly
upright, one hand resting with ease on a table, the other clutched in a defiant fist, the veins and muscles
of his still-healthy right arm illuminated by the light. His hips are swung subtly to one side, and the
posture communicates an attitude of both insolence and nonchalance. Thus, the juxtaposition between
Larry’s god-like qualities, his athletic, tall, and muscular form (very much the Greek ideal), in contrast
to his withering left arm are given full visualization, and the viewer feels the subject’s spiritual triumph
against his disease.
While the picture is an aesthetic representation of the paradox of Larry’s god-like form and
strength in his undeniably diseased state, Mann’s decision to title the picture “Hephaestus” solidifies her
belief in her subject’s godliness, as well as renders the photograph less personal and more universal.
Furthermore, the choice of not showing Larry’s face gives the photograph a universal quality, as the
subject embodies a larger, broader significance with the subtraction of his identity. The figure could be
any number of men, and this ambiguity allows the photograph to take on the protean nature of Greek
myths. Just as myths can take on different meanings depending upon the reader or artists adapting it, the
photograph of Larry is ambiguous enough to transcend limitations often imposed by particulars while
remaining true to Proud Flesh’s polarizing themes of degeneration, illness, and spiritual strength.
“Hephaestus,” indeed, embraces these contradictions, yet it renders this oft-forsaken God in the light of
Sally Mann’s deep affection for her husband, and in so doing glorifies the physically imperfect through
the lens of sacramental, enduring, and rapturous love.
3
Cantor, What Remains.
4
Mann, “Sally Mann: Proud Flesh”
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“Hephaestus”
by Sally Mann
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For reference, other photographs from Proud Flesh:
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