Research 7 - Sally Mann

The first book I picked up of Sally Mann is titled Immediate Family and left me felling uneasy.   All images are black and white and as the title implies are photographs of Sally's immediate family, primarily her children.  I was uneasy as many of the images were of the children without clothing, with nothing hidden.  My reaction was to take the book back to the library !  However, I was back at the library a few weeks later and read the Source magazine in which there was an article about Sally Mann.  I read the article and felt I should view the book again.   There are some stunning images in there - i have selected a couple of my favourites and put them in my scrapbook.   They are titled: Easter Dress dated 1986; it is a country location in a back garden showing a washing line with one dress hanging on it, 3 children and 1 adult, presumably granddad.  The lighting is stunning, it catches the hair of the two girls and encompasses almost half the picture diagonally.  One girl is proudly holding her dress out to the side for the camera whilst the other two children seem oblivious to the camera.  The depth of field is fairly wide focusing on the little girl in the foreground; the fence keeping the children in the garden is in focus and then beyond the landscape starts to blur.   The picture is simple, has fantastic colour and varying shades of black and whites and greys.     Other pictures in this book include The New Mothers again taken outdoors with props including pushchair, dolls, sunglasses and a fake cigarette.   The picture was taken in sunlight, with shadows on the grass and the girls.   The image which I am specifically uncomfortable with is called Rodney Plogger and is a picture of one of Sally's daughters standing between the legs of a male whose hands are placed over the little girls. What was the purpose of this picture?   To show the proportion of hand size between the child and adult?  There are other images I am still not comfortable with but I felt it important to discuss not just the images I like but those I don't.   The pictures were taken in the 1980s which was a time I myself was growing up and images were taken of children in the bath, in the sink but times have changed so much now that these images would be considered wrong or inappropriate.  Or is that just my opinion?   Sally has done a few books, others include WHAT REMAINS which contains photographs taken at the Federal Forensic Anthropology Facility known as a body farm.   Pictures include a covered up corpse in a wooded area which looks amazingly peaceful.  Others are of bodies decomposing.  The texture of the skin is so life like (orange peel and dried out).   Again the pictures are all black and white or sepia which gives an impression of times gone by.  Some pictures are so dark you have to strain to make out the image.    Sally Mann was born in 1951 in Virginnia.  She has to date refrained from using digital cameras, instead preferring to stay with traditional photography.    A woman after my own heart; I feel this digital society and subsequent manipulation of photographs is cheating !!   Maybe it will grow on me.  I have put in my folder some copies of her photographs that I have referred to in this blog.