SALLY GALL
looking up
STEVE MILLER: I saw your show Aerial and it blew
me away. No one would guess that it’s laundry. Without
any context for the series, a number of people guess sea
creatures first. Was that an intentional enigma?
SALLY GALL: When I started making this body of work,
I thought of the clothing as being otherworldly and ani-
malistic, and very much like creatures in the ocean (the
ocean being the blue canvas of sky). When I showed
some of this new work to people they responded with
“what am I looking at?” which was very surprising to
me. While I was shooting I kept thinking of abstract
painters such as Joan Miro and his “creatures”. I was
aware that I was transforming the clothing I was photo-
graphing into something other than itself and it was the
act of transformation that was compelling, not necessar-
ily the references.
STEVE: I think part of the enigma is the lack of scale
and uncertainty.
SALLY: When I started the series, I was making photo-
graphs that were much more literal than abstract as I in-
cluded architecture, pieces of buildings and balconies . .
and clothespins . . but as I kept photographing I started
eliminating context. I wanted to make the photos more
disembodied. It made photographing difficult because I
had to find subject matter that met my criteria perfectly –
clothing not hanging too close to a building for example.
(I was mainly photographing in alleyways and narrow
streets of the historic centers of small towns in southern
Italy and Sicily). I photograph what I see and I compose
in the field, so these are all real found situations.
STEVE: That’s interesting. It answers a lot of questions
about that lack of scale and specificity. You don’t know
where you are and I think that’s part of the enigmatic,
mysterious and successful quality of the work.
Portrait by Nina Subin.
4