Lee Mary Manning
Photographer Lee Mary Manning (b. 1972, Alton, Illinois) models a method of close and care-filled looking in carefully arranged juxtapositions of 35mm analog prints.
Taking familiar objects and scenes as their subject matter, Manning’s photos picture people, nature, the street, and everything in between.
Conceptualizing “paying attention as a practice of being alive,” the artist insists on the importance and meaning of quiet moments and humdrum things that might initially seem unremarkable. For Manning, photography is an exercise in recording and collecting—often prints are paired with saved mementos such as insect parts, a restaurant napkin, or a plastic bag. Sharing this diaristic archive of their lived experience pivots on a sincere relationship of trust with the viewer that they too will be interested in noticing the commonplace. Even as the works function as a record, they don’t document the artist’s experiences in a particularly legible way. Manning’s photos flirt with a kind of poetic illegibility—everyday life, abstracted.
To make their works, Manning uses basic point and shoot film cameras and works largely with mini-lab prints that they can hold and move around next to each other, finding felicitous formal congruences between the images. This sequencing practice began with their website Unchanging Window, a pre-Instagram, pre-Tumblr online forum that began in 2006 as a way to share photos and cultural recommendations with friends. Despite their online origins, the works resist crisp, digitized image culture. Instead, Manning takes an unprecious approach. The images are never retouched or cropped, occasionally they show the trace of fuzz on the lens or are slightly out of focus, and prints can be covered in fingerprints. While Manning is slow and intentional about looking and choosing what to capture, the physical act of taking the photo is often improvised and on-the-move—and the motion of the body of the photographer is often legible through the blur of the print. Primarily influenced by dance, film, and poetry, Manning often draws from the formal methods of these media. The shaped juxtapositions of their multi-photograph compositions are akin to the rhythmic quality of poetic stanzas or the evocative cuts of experimental film. The works exemplifyboth photography and looking as acts of care, tenderly drawing our attention to modest but remarkable moments.
Artist: Studio
"I might start out by setting a bunch of pictures on a napkin and saying, Well, that looks really cool. Sometimes using ephemera feels like a trick, a fun kind of device. But I want to find the gentlest version of the arrangement. It’s like letting something seep through a mesh sieve and seeing what stays."
Artworks
Installation Views
Exhibitions
Publications
Grace Is Like New Music, Lee Mary Manning, 2023
Lee Mary Manning
Grace Is Like New Music, 2023
First Impressions of Greece, Lee Mary Manning, 2014
Lee Mary Manning
First Impressions of Greece, 2014
Press
John Vincler, “Lee Mary Manning, A Young Artist in Their 50s, Keeps Peaking”, Cultured, June 21
Cassie Packard "The Case for the Place of Feeling in Photography." ArtReview October 5, 2023
Izzy Einstein "Speaking in Tongues." office July 20, 2022
Maia Siegel "Lingua Franca." The Brooklyn Rail July 15, 2022
"Close Listening: Mary Manning and Ben Estes in Conversation." Bomb May 9, 2022
Lisa Yin Zhang "Mary Manning Ambient Music." TheGuide.Art May 4, 2022
John Vincler "What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries Right Now." NYT April 27, 2022
Johanna Fateman "“Looking Back: The 12th White Columns Annual"." Artforum March 1, 2022
Ruby Jeune Tresch "ARTIST OF THE WEEK Mary Manning." LVL3 December 14, 2021
"Isn’t There Another Part of Now." Girls Like Us Summer 2017
CV
Lee Mary Manning
b. 1972, Alton, IL
Lives and works in New York, NY
Education
1994
BA, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2024
Kiss of the Sun, CANADA, New York, NY
Veedon Fleece, Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore, Ireland
2023
Mary Manning: In Excelsis, Complesso Monumentale di San Nicolò, Spoleto, Italy
Spora, Swiss Institute, New York, NY
2022
Ambient Music, CANADA, New York, NY
2018
Love, CANADA, New York, NY
Blueprints, Little Sister, Toronto, Canada
2017
Trees Is As Good As Anything, Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn, NY
2015
August, 8 Ball Super Club, New York, NY