Georgia, Untitled (Black Spot) 1996

Sally Mann made this gelatin silver print, Untitled (Black Spot), and you can see how its tones shift from charcoal blacks through silvery grays, and into a creamy, almost blinding white. Looking at this, I imagine Mann in the darkroom, coaxing these tones to appear through the various chemical baths of the developing process. It’s a reminder that photography is so much more than the click of a shutter – it’s about time, accidents, and how the artist decides to work with both. The “black spot” itself is so diffuse and mysterious, almost like a bruise blooming across the surface. It’s hard not to think of Helen Frankenthaler’s stain paintings from the 1950s, where she poured thinned paint directly onto raw canvas, letting the colors seep and spread organically. There’s something similarly fluid and unpredictable about Mann’s mark-making here. All artists are in an ongoing conversation – taking cues from each other, and pushing boundaries in ways that feel personal and new.