For the 2022 edition of Paris Photo, Gagosian is pleased to announce the first joint presentation of works by Deana Lawson and Sally Mann. The two artists collaborated to choose photographs from one another’s oeuvre, including some works that have not been previously exhibited. The selection establishes a dialogue between their respective practices, using portrait, landscape, and interior imagery to examine themes of identity and representation.
Both artists primarily utilize large- or medium-format cameras and compose their images with deliberation, developing their own prints with careful attention to tone, color, and surface qualities. Highlighting the interaction between photographer and subject in portrait photography, Lawson’s Andreen (2022) and Mann’s Ebeer at Home (2001) show women who directly return the gaze of the camera. With relaxed, confident poses, the subjects’ attire and domestic settings speak to their individual and cultural differences.
Photographs by both artists depict landscapes in the American South that are enveloped by kudzu, an invasive vine so prevalent as to have become emblematic of the region. In Georgia, Untitled (Kudzu) (1996), Mann’s use of an antiquarian lens, orthochromatic film, and tea-toning produces an image in selective focus to emulate nineteenth-century photographic technology and lend the scene an aura of primordial mystery. Lawson’s Between Montgomery and Pratville (2022) is a color photograph of a hillside that has been transformed by the rampant plant growth, pictured as a sea of green without a visible horizon.
In an uncanny displacement of landscape, Lawson’s Funereal Wallpaper (2013) pictures scenic wall decoration with a maritime theme, its illusion challenged by the leaves of a synthetic plant on the perimeter of the frame that both complements the scene and reinforces its artificiality. Mann’s Delta series (2016–) likewise focuses on outmoded interiors that house artificial plants, botanical illustrations, and mirrors with obscured reflections. These images of liminal spaces establish complex and shifting interactions between the representation of nature and the built environment, while testing the directness of photographic depiction.
Download the press release in English (PDF) or French (PDF)
