[pure-silver] Re: Sally Mann lecture in Houston
- From: Shannon Stoney <sstoney@xxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 09:09:24 -0500
hi,
On the contrary, this can go somewhere but no in the direction it's
headed. I think that some very important issues have been raised
concerning our cultural values as concerns sexuality, exploitation
of said sexuality, capitalism, issues of consent and responsibility
in the context of a family and of society, in general, and finally,
our own moral stance vis-a is issues of privacy, voyeurism, truth,
and even more so when it concerns the actions of one of our own,
well, a very prominent one of our own ;)
I was thinking that photography has a special responsibility in this
regard, as opposed to say painting. A painting of a little girl
posed as an odalisque on a sofa is different from a photograph of a
particular girl on a particular sofa at a particular time. A
painting of a girl is often sort of a generalized idea of a girl.
Sometimes you can recognize the model, but most of the time the
painting in effect says "young girl" not "Jessica Mann." This is why
at life drawing classes, the models don't mind if you draw them, but
often they refuse to be photographed. A photograph is always of a
particular individual, with a name. People can easily be recognized
in their photographs, as opposed to in paintings, say. A very
realistic painting can make the person recognizable, obviously, but
we understand paintings to be "made up" as it were, composed perhaps
of elements from different places, from the painter's imagination,
etc.
Now of course, people like Sally Mann and other academic and art
world types allege that photography is always fiction and that
anybody who thinks that photography represents truth is a naif. But
Barthes, hardly a naif, pointed out that in photography, the image in
the photograph has to represent something that was in front of the
lens at one time. (Forget photoshop for now.) As he says, "The
referent adheres." So when we see a picture of Jessica Mann in the
nude at age 11, hanging from a hay hook or posed as an odalisque on a
sofa, we know that that is Jessica Mann, not a generic girl. Now
that Jessica Mann is 25 or something, we still have a picture of her
at age 11, posed in a sexually provocative way. She can never escape
this record of herself at that age: it's in the culture in such a way
that it can't be retracted. Imagine yourself in this situation, and
think about how that would feel.
This is why I think that such photographs should not be made. When
you are five, or seven or eleven, you can't understand how a sexually
provocative photograph of yourself might be used in the world at
large. You don't know anything about sex, or men, or mass culture,
or voyeurism, or capitalism. You trust your parents. So you agree.
Then, fifteen years later, you do understand. You see these
photographs on other people's coffee tables, maybe hanging on their
walls. Your mother continues to show them as part of her slide show
to strangers in other cities. And you are still Jessica Mann, the
girl that was in those 1992 pictures. You can't escape this. You will
always be the beautiful naked child in the pictures. This is how
most people think of you: as this beautiful naked vulnerable child.
Put the sexualization issue aside for a minute. Some people might
say: what's wrong with being beautiful? The problem is: you know
that it's something unearned, a lucky accident of birth and genes,
nothing that you have any control over, and it could be taken from
you in an instant, and it will be taken from you eventually by time,
and then what will you have? If your whole identity is your
appearance, you are not being loved for who you are, for the content
of your character as MLK said, but for your curly golden hair and
slim nubile body. This is bad and demeaning.
If I were these girls, I would feel betrayed by my parents and very
angry. I woiuld be working hard to forge an identity separate from
the one my parent created for me. I think the girls are probably
doing that and good luck to them. Some child stars have managed to
do this, but it's a hard row to hoe. I think it would be better if
we didn't define little girls primarily as objects to be looked at by
older men in the first place. Let's face it: men are the audience
for these pictures. Little boys don't give a fig about naked little
girls their own age. Pictures of beautiful naked little girls are
commodities for mature men to look at.
--shannon
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