[pure-silver] Re: Sally Mann lecture in Houston
- From: Peter De Smidt <pdesmidt@xxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 10:22:28 -0700
Shannon Stoney wrote:
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.
[snip]
If I were these girls, I would feel betrayed by my parents and very
angry.
Well, that's you. Maybe someone should ask Jessica? I'm not very
familiar with Sally Mann's work, but I do know a little about Jock
Sturges, and on the face of it the issues are quite similar. Years
after the photographs were taken, many of his models say that they were
honored to be included, and he regularly photographs children of people
he photographed when they were children. That's an odd thing for a
parent to do if they thought that his photographing them harmed him in
any way.
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