Take a moment to look closely at the picture and analyze what it makes you feel. For most cases, it provokes anger while others think it’s a masterpiece, not only due to the way it captures its subject, but for its composition and use of light. If you’re one of the first ones, why do you think it makes you feel uncomfortable or even offended? Is it the fact that a young girl is holding a cigarette? Is it her pose? Perhaps, her strong stare and attitude? Or maybe all of this. Since the publication of Immediate Family in 1992 (the book including this particular image) many authors have written about it, especially due to the controversy it raised. Why would a mother take and publish a picture of her daughter like this?
However, this was not the first time photographer Sally Mann had been in the middle of controversy for her work. In 1988 she published her first book called At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women, where she captures pre-adolescent girls posing in, let’s say, more adult-like ways. Many were shocked by these images of girls assuming adult roles, as it happens in “Candy Cigarette” (which, as the name clarifies, was just a candy). However, this was just the beginning of a very successful yet controversial career. While many consider her one of the best American photographers that have ever existed, others think her work is outright depraved.
After she finished her education in the first half of the seventies, she started photographing landscapes where she would travel with her husband, but in 1979, when they had their first of their three children, she found herself unable to travel as much as her work required. It was then when she decided to change the focus of her work and started taking photos of her own children. Most of these photographs portray them in nude poses challenging the camera. While showing the intimacy of her own family, she also analyzes the mere nature of human family relationships. But why exactly did her photos trouble her audience?
At first sight, the children’s intensity in their eyes, their poses, and their nudity can be striking and give us the impression of loss of innocence. However, if you keep looking at them, you start forgetting about the nudity and the poses, and start seeing the idea of the family roles and relationship. I mean, if you look at your family photos, it’s probably you’ll find at least one picture of you naked when you were a kid. However, the issue here was the publication of these images. Actually, for years she experienced hard censorship and banning of her work, and even when some magazines did publish some of her photos, they were censored with huge black squares covering the children’s face and genitalia.
She’s been accused of putting her work and popularity before the safety and wellness of her children. First, on a psychological level, how would they feel when they grew up and discovered they’ve been exposed in such a way? And second, what about their integrity? Many people claim that there’s a lot of pederasty out there and that publishing pictures of naked children in these type of situations only encourages pedophiles to take them as child pornography. To be honest, I hadn’t thought about this until I read it in the article by Richard B. Woodward published in 1992 in the New York Times, and it did freak me out a little bit. Not because, as many radical groups have stated, her work promotes pornography, but due to the idea that images of your children ––no matter how artistic and innocent they claim to be–– can get in the hands of pedophiles.
Actually, she was never pursued by the law, but when these statements began, she consulted a prosecutor for legal advice, and he told her that she could be arrested under allegations of child pornography. But just as she had strong detractors, there were some followers who believed this is just an exaggeration and proof of how perverted we are as a society. They’re the ones who are sexualizing children, and isn’t the fact that they censored a four-year-old naked picture enough proof of that? I mean, isn’t the one who’s covering her genitals the one who’s seeing them in a sexual way?
Professor Benjamin Cardoza (School of Law in New York) intended, at the time, to change the Federal laws regarding child pornography, arguing that there were some loopholes in it that put in risk this type of artistic work. And although I don’t really see Mann’s photos as clear cases of child pornography, I do believe that actually changing the law so that there’s some sort of artistic freedom, it’s also opening a door for a misuse of these type of works.
Moreover, in these photos, nudity isn’t the only issue. In most of her images you can see these children with swollen eyes or other injuries they got by playing, and although you can say these are harmless and that I might sound radical and conservative, I do believe there’s a line dividing the children’s private moments in life that shouldn’t be published. It’s as if every single aspect of their private life was just exposed out there.
Unlike many, I’m not shocked about nudity, nor the adult-like poses they make. What strikes me the most is the sensation of her being more concerned about getting a photo than about their childhood. Her children were taken to a psychologist, who stated that they were perfectly fine and had clear ideas of their family bonding and the roles they had. However, there’s something that caught my attention in the article I mentioned. The author asks Jessie, the eldest of the children, if she’s fine with being the subject of her mother’s photos. And she claims that the only times she wished she wouldn’t do them was when she had friends over and her mother just called for picture time. Mann explained that she worked every day for an hour or so on the pictures, but didn’t her children had a choice?
Of course, these photos ended, as Mann planned it, when the body of her eldest daughter started developing. At the time, she had explained that her children’s safety was her first priority and she stated her biggest concerns regarding this. First, she was aware that by making their faces public, they could be recognized on the streets and traced. At the end of the day, she made them public figures. The other thing that worried her the most was that they would change their mind later and think that she had actually used them in some darker ways. Anyway, although these images were taken so long ago and now the kids have grown up, there’s still some sort of controversy around this acclaimed photographer and her work.
If you want to see more of her work, take a look at her official website: Sally Mann
***
For more stories behind famous photographs, take a look at these:
The Real Story Behind The Tragic Image Of The Migrant Mother
These Photos Show How French Women Were Punished For Collaborating With Nazis
The Story Behind The Tragic Fate Of This Woman And The Man Who Captured Her
***
