The deadpan technique dovetailed with what seemed an ironic elevation of banal images.

The richness of associations he could elicit from even the most banal image, like a flag, has given way to a language of allegory and symbol.

His work tends to focus on the "off-beat, hauntingly banal images of modern America" according to The Guardian art critic Hannah Booth.

When his work is successful, banal images seem to be profound riddles; when it fails, banality is banality.

"Somehow in America black artists aren't allowed to use banal images of blackness," she said.

Occasionally, as in "Dog Team With Shadows," a banal image of faceless people and dogs on a snowy landscape was transformed by an anonymous needleworker.

Compared with the banal and mawkish images of children we see on television and in magazines every day, the information in Mann's beautiful photographs is hardly cause for alarm.

He looked at the banal image of the asteroid directly before the starship.

But there is something odd about this ordinary, even banal, image.

Dressed in a black hat, leather pants and silver studs, it's obvious that he's trying to build an image, however banal.