Disturbing Images
April 22, 1999
This essay is adapted from a lecture delivered at the college on April 22.
Few photographers disturb our sensibilities more than Sally Mann, whose beautifully-crafted pictures of her own children, naked, bloody, and bruised, are on display at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum until June 27.The immediate reaction of most viewers is outrage. How could a mother, of all people, record her daughter naked, lying on a urine-soiled bed, her son with blood dripping down his chest, or her daughter seemingly impaled on a meat hook? Mann's pictures offend our conventional wisdom, both about what childhood should be and how mothers should protect their children.
Curiously, this artist has never been censored. Her work has even been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. To most first-time viewers, however, she has earned the right to be censured; her family images are redolent of decadence and child abuse. The childhood she has filmed with her documentary camera is the antithesis of what we would want for our children. Decent parents would never photograph their children in such circumstances.
Mann's children look like little Lords and Ladies of the Flies. If they lived next door, we would probably not let our children play with them. Indeed, if these pictures are to be believed, her children should be wrapped in blankets and bundled off to foster care.
If Mann lived in South Hadley, Massachussetts, she certainly would have been told what a bad mother she is. My wife got such lectures, just for letting our sons wear "coed naked" T-shirts to high school. When our boys had the temerity to challenge the censorship of their shirts in court, a columnist for Boston Globeinsisted that they must have grown up in "a home full of cultural sludge." Another, writing for the Valley Advocate,compared them to the Menendez brothers, then on trial for murdering their parents. That's what happens when you wear disturbing images in my town.
When Jock Sturges, who lives in Colorado, published his pictures of pre-teens lounging about in their birthday suits, the FBI seized all his photographs and kept them for two years while they tried to prove that he sought to promote pedophilia. When booksellers displayed David Hamilton's book of budding breasts, the booksellers were indicted for purveying obscenity by grand juries in Alabama and Tennessee. But Sally Mann, who photographed her children naked in rural Virginia, has so far escaped censorship, although she lives among the Christian Right.
Why? Perhaps Virginia's prosecutors know how hard it is to
censor anybody today. My sons won their case, 7-0, in the state's
highest court. The prosecutions relating to the works of Sturges
and Hamilton both failed, and the Supreme Court now permits
pornography on the Internet.
But that doesn't explain why her exhibits haven't been closed or
why she hasn't been denied government grants. To first-time
viewers, her children certainly look like the neglected off-spring
of dirt-poor hippies, or trailer trash in-need-of-supervision.
Of course, the good people of Lexington, Virginia, know better. The
Manns drive a Chevrolet Suburban and own 400 acres of the best real
estate in town. Sally's mother may have been a Yankee, but her
daddy was a Reb, a good doctor who delivered nearly everyone in
town. Sally went to Bennington, that hippie college in Vermont, but
she also had the good sense to return home and reclaim the family
farm. Her neighbors may even think it funny that she can get rich
by selling pictures of her kids in New York and by giving slide
shows about them to women in New England.
For the rest of us, the big issue with Mann's family photos is not
free expression but privacy. More precisely, it is the wisdom of
taking such revealing pictures and publishing them before the
children are old enough to consent.
In occasional lectures, Mann assures us that her children not only
consented to the pictures, but played an active role in their
creation. They still endorse her work, now that they are adults.
Perhaps, but her mode of child-rearing still looks like one of
those psychologically-risky ventures that we would not recommend
anyone try at home. But who are we to argue? They are her kids. She
knows them best, and if anyone should intervene, it is not us, but
the state department of children's services. So, rather than demand
censorship, we accept her explanations and go on to admire the
diaphanous beauty of her platinum prints.
Even so, we still grumble. Since Victorian times, our moral
majority has felt duty-bound to shield young children from most
intimations of sex, death, or doom. In my town, that has meant
censoring T-shirts. But Sally Mann disagrees. By photographing
children with tense crotches, standing next to menstrual-stained
bedcovers, or hanging lifeless from a rope, she profoundly disturbs
our conventional proprieties.
Most viewers are especially angry that she should take a picture of
a daughter with a terribly battered eye instead of comforting her.
Were they to attend one of Mann's slide shows, however, viewers
would learn that she did hug and kiss her daughter, as any mother
would have done. They will also learn that the girl's eye was
swollen from bug bites, not violence, and that she was delighted to
have her mother record the injury.
Still, Mann looks like a neglectful parent, allowing her pre-teens
to run naked and wild. Only from lectures do we learn that she
raised them on a secluded estate and watched them like a hawk. She
was always there -- with a camera, of course, but she was there.
Truth be told, her children are not the feral creatures they appear
to be and she is not a Mommy Dearest. She's more like the guy who
dressed up his dogs and made calendar pictures of them. And, like
those dogs, her kids enjoyed being the center of attention. So,
maybe she is not such a bad mother after all.
But, suppose Sally's husband had taken these pictures. Would we be
so forgiving? If the local morals squad paid him a visit, would we
be as likely to spring to his defense as we would to his wife's? If
these pictures had been taken by a man, would museums be as eager
to exhibit them, or invite him to explain why he was so interested
in filming naked children? There is probably a reason why few
museums display the sadomasochistic work of Robert Maplethorpe,
despite his undeniable artistry.
In other words, it is not just the artfulness of Mann's images that
shields her from condemnation; it is the artful way she excuses her
transgressions. We look at the picture of the all-too-aware girl
with the cigarette and fear she is headed for trouble. Then we read
the caption and discover that the cigarette is made of candy.
Similarly, those scabrous legs are not diseased; flour and water
just made them look that way. The red liquid on the boy's abdomen
is not really blood; it is raspberry juice. The naked girl in the
harlot's pose is really innocent; look closely and you will see
that she has a wad of chewing gum on her finger. The children look
wild, shameless, and out of control, but the captions tell us
otherwise. Eventually, we are assured, Sally's little swamp foxes
will put on clothes and joined the middle class, just like
ours.
In this respect Mann's work is very different from that of the men
who have been censored. Andre Serrano gave us a beautiful picture
of a crucifix submerged in amber liquid, and then ruined it by
telling us that the liquid was urine. At that point, few people
were interested in learning any more, and Mr. Serrano is not likely
to receive any government grants. Similarly Robert Maplethorpe is
not likely to be forgiven for introducing us to a homosexual who
has a whip handle stuck firmly up his behind. These men pushed the
envelope in ways Sally Mann has not.
Many people took Mann at her word when she claimed to have made a
documentary of her children's lives. That's something most of us,
as parents, would love to do, if we only had her skill with a
camera. We are outraged by what her pictures seem to say, relieved
to learn that her children were not abused, and then persuaded that
the whole family has been having us on. The pictures are true in
one sense and fictitious in another, leaving some viewers with a
vague sense of betrayal. Children are supposed to be innocent,
guileless, and spontaneous; hers seem to have learned too much, too
early, and are complicit in her fraud. Besides, if you can't trust
a Matthew Brady camera to tell you the truth, who can you
trust?
Ironically, the very inauthenticity of Mann's portraits shields her
from censorship. Once we know that the images have been contrived,
our anger evaporates and, with it, the impulse to censor or
denounce. We are no longer sure what her pictures mean, which both
heightens our curiosity and protects her from censorship.
Despite Mann's choice of equipment, she is no Matthew Brady, the
Civil War photographer whose unblinking camera forever destroyed
our romantic view of war.
She is more like Cindy Sherman with a touch of John Irving: like
Sherman because she is something of a performance artist, and like
Irving, because her pictures (including those ominous slashes of
light and shadow) seem to warn us of Irving's "undertoad." But,
even as we sense danger, we do not reach out to rescue these
children. Something tells us that these defiant urchins are
nobody's victims.
So I think we can safely dismiss Mann's claims of innocence; her
bewilderment at the suggestion that pre-teens can be sexual, or her
surprise that anyone would consider her work controversial. This
artist and her performing children know exactly what they are
doing. They are jerking our chain. We may think she is allowing us
see her family album, but she isn't. For all their undeniable
artistry, her photos are something of a hoax. The joke is on us and
that is what preserves her privacy and saves her from censorship.
Despite its documentary aura, Mann's family album does not tell the
truth in the tradition of Matthew Brady, Walker Evans, or Dorothea
Lange. And we are relieved that it doesn't.
Lawyers can explain why Mann's images, including mother and
daughters peeing (not in the show), fail to qualify for censorship
in books, at galleries, or on the Internet. My sons can explain why
her pictures can now be printed on T-shirts and worn to any high
school in Massachusetts. But Mann needs no legal help. By revealing
how her pictures were contrived, she has protected herself from all
but the most stupid of censors.
Permanent link to this story: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/stories/5683097
