Jessie Mann

[Andrea.RL]

Sally mann's daughter. She is an artist, model.

What follows comes from this site: subjectify.blogspot.com

Subjectify: You wrote in Aperture that people often come up to you and say “You don’t know me, but I know you” and that you take their words as true—they do know you. What do they know?

Jessie Mann: I think the conceptual issue exemplified by this anecdote might just be the most difficult of the questions raised by my life experience, and by extension, Self Possessed (my collaborative photography project with Len Prince—which examines the role of the subject in art). The ways in which perception and documentation alter the self, as well as consideration for the nature and seat of that self, are concepts which are examined through our collaboration and implicated in this statement I hear so often. By exploring what of my ‘self’ is contained in my abstract, or symbolic form, I am challenging where the “I” traditionally exists. When strangers claim to know me—I have to ponder what they know and who I am. Do I exist in my inner monologue alone?

Where do we most fully exist? Which self—external or internal—is more valid? Are we living in our heads—our own thought is all we have to be certain of? Or is reality, the rocks we stub our toes on, as opposed to the pain we feel, where our self is of greatest substance and meaning? Does the external world of other’s thoughts (collective thought, thought as an abstract) ground us in a subjective nature? When I say it is true they know me, I mean it, I have come to grant that abstract self possession of an “I”ness.

Having run up against the external self others have created for me, I have spent a lot of time considering the nature of the self—internal, social/biological, and symbolic. Yet, as I have said, this is something everyone has to deal with. We are all, and have always been, addressing the nature of ourselves.

When people approach me with that statement they are simply telling me their truth—they know a Jessie Mann, who corresponds in some way to my physical presence, and I know of no version of them. Now, one could say (and I did at one time say myself) they don’t really know ME, though. But how can I so confidently say that, maybe the abstract version of myself is the more real me; the self more imbued with life than the self resting in my deep inner dialog. How do I determine where “I” really am?

Possibly because I had to confront it so much, I began to let go of [my] automatic response, wherein I protect an entirely personal, primary and self contained self. I began to consider what exactly it was these strangers were telling me. I mean, they seemed sincere, they were telling me a truth from their perspective. Could what they say to me be more true than my instinctual mental negation—‘they don’t really know me’?

They do know me. They know a me I might not even know, but it may in fact be the me which stores my ‘self’ most certainly. My private self is fleeting but deep, my social self has a longer duration and is more interactive, so to speak, but my symbolic self gains the attributes of the symbol—its is translatable, it is multifunctional—as it is abstract and can thus be applied to a variety of specific concepts, and it is autopoetic.

When people believe that they know me, when people do, in fact, engage in knowing me through their mental experience of a photograph—some part of my nature (maybe not that part which is most deep in me, but a part which is active, nonetheless) was transmitted to them through a work of art, and one must, to be fair, at least consider that art, therefore, works. Yay.

 

[Andrea.RL]

from the same site

I was so interested to find out that in addition to posing for your mother (and before the work you’re now doing with Len Prince in “Self Possessed”), you also modeled for photographers Justine Kurland and Katy Grannan. Did you always know that you would continue modeling and musehood? Did you ever rebel against it?

Jessie Mann: Even while I was working with Justine, and after I had posed for Katy—I still didn’t recognize that what I was doing was an artistic or creative action. It was just something I did, like breathing. I had no real sense of starting it, neither did I think of it as something I could stop. When Katy came to my boarding school for shoots, or when Justine and I would drive around the Virginia countryside talking about images and scouting locations, I did not think of myself as a creating agent. Ironically, it was through regarding the public response to mom’s photographs that I began to consider the role of the muse, not through the action of “musing.” As I digested the manner in which the public automatically dismissed our [my siblings and my] possible collaboration and enjoyment in the creative process which culminated in the Immediate Family series, I started to focus on the sad fact that this is a pervasive response in regard to the subject of art, specifically when that subject matter is a woman. It wasn’t until late in my conversations with Justine about the role of the subject and my frustration with the assumption of exploitation (while working in front of the camera) that it dawned on me that what I doing, was related. Honestly, it came to me very slowly that I could use this thing, this love I had for a connection with the camera, to tell the story about the very position, of being in front of the lens. A story often distorted or overlooked entirely. It is embarrassing how slow it all was when I think about it now. I think I came to understand the importance of the position of the subject while I worked with Katy and Justine but it wasn’t until I was already started on "Self Possessed" that I realized the full artistic agency of the muse. This delayed response was, you are correct in your question, because I did rebel.

Never did I rebel against the act of being a muse or subject. But I did rebel against the idea of ‘the muse’ as it is currently established and I also rebelled against being an artist in general. Of course it is a challenge to be the artist child of a famous artist, but what really put me off admitting to being an artist was that I had this sense that I had to do something concretely good in the world, and I couldn’t see that the only true way to do that, was to do something you love. I thought I had to do something serious and hard.

When I met Len Prince, I blurted out this bundle of ideas about the subject as an active agent in art, about how the story, from Alice’s perspective, has yet to be written, about how it had to be done through the looking glass, how I thought I might have an abstract character capable of symbolic action… and Len said “I need a muse”. Of course, given that I was a self hating muse at this time, I was a little insulted that he thought that was all I had in mind. It was only once we worked together, once we built our first set together, and gathered props like giddy playmates, only once we had made our first image together as collaborators, that I realized what a powerful thing it was—to muse. What a gift it was to have found a partner who defined muse in a way that made me love the word. I realized that I had been practicing an artistic craft all these years. When it finally dawned on me that art could make arguments better than words, when I realized that art could transmit knowledge and awareness, as much as any science—when I saw how elegantly art could code for both subjectivity and consciousness—I was like a convert. At that point, there I was, with my medium right under my nose, and a story to tell, and I reconciled with it all. With my rebellion over and already preliminarily engaged with Len on the zygote of Self Possessed, I found myself a zealot. I began to bring a new determination and purpose with me to the shoot, because I knew then that there was a way to express the ideas about self and subjectivity that I had so long considered, and I was lucky enough to have been granted the experience necessary to know how to do it. And then, there I was with yet another wonderful artist to explore ideas with. It was at that moment, knee deep in doing it, that I knew that this is what I would do forever and it was what I was meant to do.

I console myself that I am not the only one who was a little slow to realize the Aristotelian phrase “You are what you do everyday.”

 

[Andrea.RL]

again from Subjectify

Many people have been famous for being subjects or muses. Some have brought vulnerability, allure, oddity, tragedy, etc. to the role. But you are one of relatively few people who have taken the reins of your subjecthood, and really approached it critically and consciously, again and again. Why do you think that is? (Even in pictures of you as a very small child, you project a very feisty sense of autonomy. Are those qualities part of what makes you poke at the classic role of the subject?)

Jessie Mann: I would like to break this question down into two parts—why I have approached my subjecthood critically and self consciously and why said self consciousness and autonomy has been a consistent part of my projected self even since childhood. I think the answers to these questions lie in my intellectual passion for the position I have found myself in and in my intrinsic character, which does seem to have a ‘feisty autonomy’; in short it breaks down into nurture and nature. Once I started working with Len and embraced this action as art, I began to think more deeply about the role of the subject in art and the nature of the self created therein. I began to think about my subjecthood, not just in terms of the issues of exploitation and the other facets of the social response to the subject—which had gotten me to the subject matter in the first place, but also in terms of the ontological nature of the abstracted character or subject. I began to research these ideas and as I honed in on writings about the anima in modern art I found myself returning to Jung. In his writings on the anima and the collective unconscious I found a scientific(!) inquiry into the spirit which moves through art—a discussion of the ways in which the unconscious informs us of our true nature through abstraction and creation. In my studies I went from Jung to Beuys, to Heidegger’s metaphysics, to Steiner, and Kandinsky. From there to Ken Wilber, Tarkovsky and quantum theory and back to Jung again— I was looking for some proof, I guess, that there was more to this action of giving to the camera than just the theoretical rebuke I was trying to make, or even the pleasure I derived from the action. I wanted to isolate that moment of spiritual exposure in art, and dissect it. It was this intellectual fascination with the quasi scientific function of the photograph on consciousness, self and identity which brought me to look so closely at the nature of the abstracted character. As such what I want the viewer to see in my expression is not someone looking into a lens but someone looking deeply past themselves.

When I read in Jung “there are present in every psyche forms which are unconscious but nonetheless active—living dispositions, ideas in the Platonic sense, that perform and continually influence our thoughts and feelings and actions” I understood it as the definition of that spirit which I knew could be exposed when I let myself function as a symbol itself. This is what is behind that anima, so often referenced, but so rarely explicated or specifically considered, in modern art. Rather than a negation of the self in art, or the assertion of self, I attempt to make the self, through abstraction, ubiquitous, in order to expose that selfless current which flows behind all artistic expression. As my research continued I studied the artists who also used themselves as a medium to create this effect, I studied those artists who, to again quote Barthes, used art and the abstract character to dissociate consciousness from identity. I would bring these folders of notes to shoots with Len, I was seriously like a Jehovah’s witness during this period. He would just roll his eyes at my youthful artistic zealotry and he would put aside the folder, and insist that we just make art for a little while (Being older and wiser he knew that being an artist is making art, not just understanding it). You know how college kids are. Nevertheless, this intellectual examination of subjecthood was played out in the photographs as my relationship with the camera deepened and my connection with the part I was playing became more informed. I think my quest to understand what it is I did and who I was, in its many stages and varying levels of abstraction, allowed me to bring self awareness and thereby self possession to the characters I manifested, not to mention passion.

But onto the second part of the question—even before I had heard the word postmodern I interacted with the camera self-awarely. When I began to examine who I am and what I do—personally in addition to theoretically, as we all must, I had to consider this strange feeling of connection which I have with the camera, which I have felt for as long as I can remember. I think it is this deep connection, built from years and years of consideration and practice, which has led me on such an intense pursuit of knowledge regarding the process of being in art and engaging the mythic. This connection itself is not intellectual—it seems to be rooted in some child like belief in the magic of make believe which makes this work and my discussions of it anything but dispassionately ironic. In the end I don’t know (I am not in a position to determine it) whether I developed an intense relationship with art and the camera because of my exposure to them. For the sake of total honesty I should admit that I did graduate preschool with an honorary degree in dress up. Whatever it is, all I know is that when I am working in front of the camera I feel like I am closest to truth; like I am looking past myself to the abstract (and potentially creatively generative) idea that I will become. As a child I think I knew, what I briefly forgot during my rebellion, that to spark the imagination is to make the world more rich with possibility.

You can find more on the site, didn't want to over flood the thread right away.

 

[Marianne85]

Maybe you can post some pictures also

 

[Torchb3arer]

Wow, thanks for founding a thread!

She is so beautiful!

 

[Andrea.RL]

your welcome!
Yep I'll go picture hunting!

 

[Marianne85]

Okay, thank you

 

[Torchb3arer]

I'd love to know what she s looking like today!

 

[Andrea.RL]

from http://www.artnet.com/Galleries/Artists_detail.asp?gid=424705927&aid=11072
Sorry but I can't find any recent pics. ><

 

[Marianne85]

How old is she ? Older than on that ^ pictures ?

 

[Andrea.RL]

yep she's older than on the pictures, but I don't know how old she is. :s

 

[Marianne85]

Okay, in the pictures you post, she looks 10/12 years old

 

[Andrea.RL]

The pictures go from 6 I think to 12.
I went on internet to find more on her, and her name comes up for art and books, but I'm not sure if it's the same person, at least for the books because I saw that she was an artist too.

 

[leeloo]

Go here to see a collaboration between herself as model and photographer Len Prince:
http://www.danzigerprojects.com/exhibitions/2006_09_jessie-mann-self-possessed/

 

[Susanna-Cole]

yep she's older than on the pictures, but I don't know how old she is. :s

She's actually about 28 years old now, or close to that. I've read that she was born in 1981. I saw the documentary ("What Remains: The Life & Work of Sally Mann) featuring her mother, and there was a segment of Jessie speaking, in which she noted she still likes to model. However from what I understood, she mainly just models casually, for photographers she meets and similar, and is not signed with any agency or pursuing modeling full time.

 

[Marianne85]

Thanks for the info

 

[Susanna-Cole]

I bought one of the old back issues of Aperture magazine that had a feature on Jessie at age 18, also featuring some pictures by her mother, Sally, that I hadn't seen before. It was a really interesting read, and I found I could relate to Jessie in a lot of ways.

If want to read it, there's a write-up of the article here. Was going to just copy and paste it here, but it's awfully long, so it's probably easier to read it at the linked source.