Immediate Family, Sally Mann, 1990

In much of the more notable work Sally Mann has engaged with her children take on roles as actors of a life seperate but equal to their own. As a child the world holds so much that's slowly but surely stripped away as you age, it's important not to lose yourself in the process. In displaying these photographs in a public setting is Mann stealing away this innocence? Mann describes her process of photographing her family, particularly her children as a uniquely communal effort with there being a mutual understanding that concepts of identity become very fluid once the camera is aimed. Mann's point in clarifying the distinction between her role as a mother and her role as an artist is interesting as we see through the reaction of her work that this can become a difficult line to walk. How do you tell the difference between an intentional exaggeration in the effort to make a compelling image vs something happened upon in the domestic household? In making this distinction it begs the audience to wonder if she spends more time as the caregiver or documentarian if she can't be both, I think this was a self-realization for Mann as well. In her interpretation the ideal of childhood innocence is a tired vision, she portrays her children with a certain autonomoy that can be percieved as threatening. Following the series initial publication in the form of a photobook Mann recieved scathing reviews by the art world informed by a moral panic. Many critics accused her of inflicting abuse unto her children to create compelling images.

The idea of photographing what passing memory feels like is integral to understanding Mann's work but more specifically in her "Southern Landscapes" series that seems to add context. There's so much movement in her depiction of nature it's disorientating to take in the scenery that seems to be in a constant state of fading in and out. She's paying homage to places that don't exist outside of the mind, if you were to visit these locations your interpretation will be informed by nostalgia just as viewing Mann's "Family Pictures" is informed by a nostalgia that you as the critic may not posses. Thinking about the intention of conversation between bodies of work more than just looking at an image at face value. Robert Mapplethorpe is one of my favorite photographers purely due to the way you can view his various bodies of work as engaging in conversation. Mapplethorpe's introduction to photography were rather ordinary portraits of flowers except he was interested in grasping at the invented personality that we may not normally associate with nature. Thinking about the flower as existing seperate from our need to find function in it. Though of course, everyone always remembers his series dealing with queer liberation, the men in leather stolen away from the undergound of New York's S&M scene but the flowers came first. His bodies of work are informed by each other but to ignore that and only focus on the virtues of one series or another is to miss the point of his practice entirely. He portrays the male nude with the same delicacy as a calla lily and that's the point. Despite physically differing thematically both bodies of work are indistinguishable. Thinking about Mann's work similarly, you have to constantly be aware of the timeline of work and what's purposefully left out of the frame and Mann is leaving a lot to the imagination. To relate the "Immediate Family" series to what we typically think of as the family album would be a dishonest interpretation.

To discuss Mann I think it's imperative to discuss the distinction between the willing and unwilling subject in photography, and how her family fits into this canon. A portion of the images published from the "Immediate Family" series included full nudity of Mann's children. Despite the fact that as discussed, Mann's children were full collaborators in the image-making process many of these images were censored. This read to many as an implictation that the family were unwilling actors, that there was something unnatural at hand and the greater population needed to be shielded from Mann's betrayal of childhood innocence. Maybe this was done with good intention although as Mann later states in interviews and personal writings this action did more to harm her children's self esteem than protect them. That they were painted in a way to say there was something inherently wrong with the way they identified to their mother's work and therefore there was a moral failing within themselves. Katy Grannan is a contemporary photographer I have in mind whose work resonates heavily with the concept of "willing and unwilling subject". Much of Grannans career has been spent documenting the margins of society with an unusual aesthetic. Her most recent project centered in central California dealt with her making portraits of the transienent populations of Los Angeles and the valley. Despite the eagerness of her subjects to collaborate she withholds this information from the viewer and this translates into the spontaneous nature of the images. I think that's a brillant way of confronting bigotry as were so eager especially in this day and age to condemn someone based off of our interpretation of them through media. But as Grannan showcases you shouldn't have to feel a need to constantly exercise a performative morality. That she approaches these people with dignity nevermind the image, the image exists seperately from the experience.