Sally Mann has used her 8 × 10 view camera to capture in fine detail, among other subjects, images of her children as they mimic and act out social and familial roles in the lush landscape of their rural Virginia home. For the series Immediate Family, posed or simply arrested in their activity, Mann’s children (who often appear nude) convey both primal and playful aspects of human behavior. The images in the series and subsequent publication At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women (1988) capture the confusing emotions and developing identities of adolescent girls. Candy Cigarette is a striking example of Mann’s distinctive combination of careful planning and serendipity. In this work Mann’s daughter Jessie suspends her activity and gracefully balances a candy cigarette in her hand, the innocent miniature of a blonde and gangling twenty-something beauty. Mann’s expressive printing style lends a dramatic and brooding mood to all of her images.
”If I could be said to have any kind of
aesthetic, it’s sort of a magpie aesthetic – I just go and I pick up whatever
is around. If you think about it, the children were there, so I took pictures
of my children. It’s not that I’m interested in children that much or
photographing them- it’s just that they were there…” Sally Mann
Virtuous Girl, 1994
Jo Jo's Discovery, 1994
Untitled, 1980 -89
The Big Girls, 1992
Landscape Mississippi / Windsor Column, 1998
Landscape, untitled, 1999
Fallen Child
Jessie at 12
Punctus (after the swim)
Mann was unaware of the controversy these photographs would cause until the time of her first gallery showing. She says that these photographs are “of my children living their lives here too. Many of these pictures are intimate, some are fictitions and some are fantastic, but most are of ordinary things that every mother has seen.”
This turned into more than a simple controversy. She was accused of child pornography both in America and abroad. Critics, however, loved her work. They said her vision was accurate and a change from the notions we were used to of childhood being a time of “unalloyed sweetness and innocence.” Mann thought of her photos as “natural through the eyes of a mother, since she has seen her children in every state: happy, sad, playful, sick, bloodied, angry and even naked.”
“Mann recorded a combination of spontaneous and carefully arranged moments of childhood repose and revealingly — sometimes unnervingly — imaginative play. What the outraged critics of her child nudes failed to grant was the patent devotion involved throughout the project and the delighted complicity of her son and daughters in so many of the solemn or playful events. No other collection of family photographs is remotely like it, in both its naked candor and the fervor of its maternal curiosity and care.”
Sally is an artist in the true sense of the word. Her work is both provocative and innocent at the same time and allows us to participate intimately in her life as voyeurs, of sorts, watching and struggling with the nature of beauty, family, love and loss.
Her more recent work with landscapes is just as powerful. She did a series in 2003 which turned into a book called “What Remains”. It is a five part series that started with taking photos of her dog, Eva, who had died. This led her to going to the Forensic Anthropology Facility where she was given permission to take photos of the dead and decomposing bodies they use for studying. She also took photos of a place on her property where an armed convict was killed, and did a study of the grounds of Antietam. The last section of the book is a series of close-up shots of the faces of her children. The book starts with death and decay but ends with what remains… what is here and now… life and love.
love the nude bum of the girl
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