Battlefields, Cold Harbor (Battle) 2003

Sally Mann's photograph, “Battlefields, Cold Harbor,” captures a haunted landscape with light and shadow. Just looking at it, I imagine her setting up her large format camera in that very spot, trying to feel what it was like to be there, on that ground. It must have been so quiet but you can almost hear the echoes of the past. The film she uses gives it this aged effect, like we are looking at a memory, a ghost. It's grainy and scratched, but it's intentional. It reminds me of Gerhard Richter’s blurred photos that speak to memory and loss. Mann's choices—the camera, the film, the printing process—become ways to talk about time and history. She transforms this ordinary patch of land into something that holds so much weight, like painting, it's all about what you leave in, and what you leave out. I think we are always influenced by each other as artists, we absorb and respond.