What Remains is an artist documentary, about the photographer Sally Mann.  This is one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen.  Sally Mann is a photographer in Virginia.  Her focus is landscapes.  She was ranked “The Best Photographer in America” one year, and she got recognition around the country and most notably among some circles in NY.

This is a very personal and honest documentary about this very humble artist living on a farm in rural Virginia.  The documentary takes you through her career.  This is much more than just a documentary with interviews, several events of Sally’s life are caught on camera in the moment as they occur.  The documentary walks us through Sally’s interests and her subjects, and why she chooses her subjects.  Her interest in the early half of the film is portraits and landscape photography.  An interesting event occured on her farm where an escaped convict was murdered, and so she began to pursue the effects of human decay on the landscape in the later part of the film.  She was allowed access onto the Univ. of TN crime lab, where several real corpses where laid about a field in order for students to study real human decay over time.  Sally photographed corpses in several degrees of decay.

Her career took a turn for the worse, when a NYC show canceled her.  However, she regained her spirits with an exhibit in Washington DC, where her family and friends could easily make the trip.  The film takes you through these ups and downs in her career, in real time and in good documentary form.

The film was directed by Steve Cantor.  At the 2008 Sundance Festival, the film was awarded Best Documentary of the Year.

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