Sally Mann
Early career
Sally Mann is an American photographer, best known for her large blackand-white photographs—at first of her young children, then later of landscapes suggesting decay and death.
After graduation, Mann worked as a photographer at Washington and Lee University. In the mid-1970s she photographed the construction of its new law school building, the Lewis Hall (now the Sydney Lewis Hall), leading to her first one-woman exhibition in late 1977 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[5] Those surrealistic images were subsequently included as part of her first book, Second Sight, published in 1984. While Mann explored a variety of genres as she was maturing in the 1970s, she truly found her trade with her second publication, At Twelve.
At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women
Her second collection, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women, published in 1988, stimulated minor controversy. The images “captured the confusing emotions and developing Early life and education identities of adolescent girls [and the] exBorn in Lexington, Virginia, Mann was pressive printing style lent a dramatic and the third of three children and the only brooding mood to all of her images.” In the daughter. Her father, Robert S. Munger, preface to the book, Ann Beattie says “when was a general practitioner, and her mother, a girl is twelve years old, she often wants – Elizabeth Evans Munger, ran the bookstore or says she wants – less involvement with at Washington and Lee University in Lexadults. […] [it is] a time in which the girls ington. Mann was raised by an atheistic yet yearn for freedom and adults feel their own compassionate father who allowed Mann grip on things becoming a little tenuous, to be ”benignly neglected.” Mann graduas they realize that they have to let their ated from The Putney School in 1969, and children go.” Beattie says that Mann’s photoattended Bennington College and Friends graphs don’t “glamorize the world, but they World College. She earned a B.A., summa don’t make it into something more unpleacum laude, from Hollins College (now Holsant than it is, either.” The girls photograplins University) in 1974 and a MA in creative hed in this series are shown “vulnerable in writing in 1975.[3] She took up photography their youthfulness” but Mann instead focuat Putney, where, she claims, her motive was ses on the strength that the girls possess. to be alone in the darkroom with her boyIn one image from the book (shown to the friend. She made her photographic debut at right), Mann says that the young girl was Putney, with an image of a nude classmate. extremely reluctant to stand closer to her Her father encouraged her interest in phomother’s boyfriend. Mann said that she tography; his 5x7 camera became the basis thought it was strange because “it was their of her use of large format cameras today.
peculiar familiarity that had provoked this photograph in the first place.” Mann didn’t want to crop out the girl’s elbow but the girl refused to move in closer. According to Mann, the girl’s mother shot her boyfriend in the face with a .22 several months later. In court the mother “testified that while she worked nights at a local truck stop he was ‘at home partying and harassing my daughter.’” Mann said “the child put it to me somewhat more directly.” Mann says that she now looks at this photograph with “a jaggy chill of realization.”
Negative criticism of Mann’s works is not hard to find. One man, Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, was against Mann’s photographs. He believes that parents should do everything in their power to protect, shelter, and nurture their children. He says that “selling photographs of children in their nakedness for profit is an exploitation of the parental role and I think it’s wrong.” Another negative criticism was found in Raymond Sokolov’s article Critique: Censoring Virginia in the Wall Immediate Family and Street Journal. He talked about whether controversy federal money should be given to the arts Mann is perhaps best known for Immediate and whether or not children should be phoFamily, her third collection, published in tographed nude. In the article, he used an 1992. The New York Times said, “Probably image of Virginia (Virginia at 4) to illustrano photographer in history has enjoyed te it and he covered her eyes, nipples, and such a burst of success in the art world.” pubic region with black bars. Mann said The book consists of 65 black-and-white he used the image without permission “to photographs of her three children, all unillustrate that this is the kind of thing that der the age of 10. Many of the pictures were shouldn’t be shown.” Mann was devastated taken at the family’s remote summer cabin and insulted that someone could mutilate along the river, where the children played her photograph like that. Virginia was also and swam in the nude. Many explore typical upset about the article. She wrote a letter childhood themes (skinny dipping, reading to the author saying “Dear Sir, I don’t like the funnies, dressing up, vamping, napping, the way you crossed me out.” Mann said playing board games) but others touch on that after Virginia saw the article, she stardarker themes such as insecurity, loneliness, ted touching herself on the areas that were injury, sexuality and death. The controversy blacked out, saying, “what’s wrong with on its release was intense, including accume?” It was somewhat difficult for Mann sations of child pornography (both in Ame- to understand the harsh criticism of these rica[12] and abroad[13]) and of contrived photographs, for she did not stage these fiction with constructed tableaux. moments - instead when she saw photos.