[pure-silver] Sally Mann lecture in Houston
- From: Shannon Stoney <sstoney@xxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 12:28:01 -0500
I'm ready to talk.
I went to a lecture on Friday night by Sally Mann, sort of a slide
show retrospective of her work to date. It was organized by the new
visual studies program at the University of Houston.
The advertisement for the lecture did not mention her book Immediate
Family so I thought she had decided not to show those pictures or
talk about them. But she did. Right before that, she talked about
the previous book, At Twelve. She said that when she was making
these pictures, that she was surprised at how sexualized the life of
these twelve year old girls was. She seemed to deplore this. she
said that one of the subjects had been raped by her stepfather, who
was also in the picture!
Then she proceeded to show the pictures of her own daughters, often
in highly sexualized poses themselves. Of course I had seen these
pictures before. But I was struck by the contradiction between what
Mann was saying about the early sexualization of girls, and her own
practise. (I have recently read a report by the American
Psychologists Association that condemns the sexualization of girls in
the media and in clothing, a problem they say has gotten worse and
that endangers the self-esteem, mental and physical health, and
academic performance of girls.) So I asked about that during the Q
and A. She was pretty defensive and said that in her photography it
was NUDITY, not SEXUALITY, and basically that only people on the
religious right have a problem with the pictures. I said I was not a
religious right nut case, and that I thought you could object to the
pictures on feminist grounds, and on the grounds that a five year old
could not give her informed consent to being photographed in this
way, and that it seemed exploitative since there was such a power
imbalance between the photographer/parent and the child. She
countered that all portrait photography was inherently exploitative!
I don't buy it. Her example was Steigltiz photographing JP Morgan
and making it look as if he was holding a dagger. But Steiglitz and
Morgan were evenly matched; maybe Steiglitz was less powerful than
Morgan. This seems a lot different from a parent posing a child in
seductive poses. Mann claims sometimes that her children were just
running around naked on a farm and that her pictures were essentially
snapshots made with a big camera, but at other times she told of the
elaborate posing and long shoots and multiple tries to get the right
shot, etc. One of the pictures showed Jessie posed on a sofa, nude,
with her hand over her crotch, just like an odalisque. How can Mann
claim that this is just nudity and not sexuality?
The next day I searched on the internet to try to find any other
viewers who thought that Mann was out of line, photographing her
daughters in such sexually suggestive ways. I found only one
scholarly article, and it hailed her as a feminist heroine, for doing
things that mothers weren't supposed to do!! Huh?!? A woman who
offers her daughters as sexual objects is a *feminist*?!?
Going back in the New York Times archives, I found several parents
and psychologists and doctors who wrote letters to the times in 1992
saying that they thought taking pictures of one's nude children was
not a good idea for the mental health of the child. One letter
suggested that Mann herself may have been abused, as she can't
remember her childhood, except that her dad photographed her in the
nude. She said in the lecture that she felt unloved and neglected by
her parents and that the only person who loved her was the maid. Yet
she seemed to idealize her father.
What I did not find were any articles by female scholars or critics
saying that this kind of objectification of young girls is not
feminist and not healthy for the girl or for the culture. I am
ashamed that my fellow female academics are afraid to criticize a
successful artist. Surely I am not the only one who cringes at the
thought of doing that to a child of my own. But, why, why, are women
artists so silent about this? Is it because we're afraid of being
seen as part of the religious right? Or of giving aid and comfort to
censors? Just for the record: I had no problem with Mapplethorpe's
portraits of gay men doing disturbing things. I thought they were
beautiful photographs, ,although disturbing. But the men in them were
adults and presumably fully aware of what they were participating in.
I think Sally Mann's photographs are usually technically excellent,
and her landscapes are fine, but I really object to the sexualized
portrayal of her daughters. Also I think I have a problem with her
photographs of dead people at the forensic farm in TN. That seems a
little exploitative too.
But my question for this list is: why are artists and academics
giving Sally Mann a pass? Or have I failed to find all the articles
and essays examining the moral implications of this work? And why do
audiences at lectures like this seem to want only to flatter the
visiting artist/star, and not to ask hard questions of her? Does
being successful financially make an artist off limits to criticism
from artists and scholars? Are women artists (presumably some of
them mothers) reluctant to criticize another artist/mother?
--shannon
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