THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603220089
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: TERESA ANNAS
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
WHATEVER nasty things censoring minds might conjure regarding Sally Mann's photographs, her images reflect the best family values.
How you see it depends where you're coming from, of course. And, basically, Sally Mann is a '60s-reared intellectual earth mother who found her freedom in the context of marriage.
Last week, Mann gave a slide lecture on her work at The Chrysler Museum of Art, where one of her prints is included in the show ``Photography Speaks II.''
The 44-year-old photographer lives in the small town of Lexington, Va., with her husband of 25 years and their three children. She grew up in Lexington, the child of a respected but eccentric country doctor.
The Manns spend their summers at a rustic cabin in the mountains; apparently, the kids run around naked in this isolated natural setting.
Meanwhile, Mom has been taking pictures. By now, fans of contemporary art photography worldwide know what Mann's kids look like. Art lovers have watched her beautiful, impish youngsters grow up. Her pictures have become famous; they have made her a millionaire ``and the most talked-about photographer of her generation,'' reported Mirabella magazine in its February issue.
Numerous books on her work have been published, from ``At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women'' (1988) to ``Sally Mann: Immediate Family'' (1992), featuring her babes in paradise.
Meanwhile, her work has been criticized for teetering too close to child pornography, because of the nudity and poses that are innocently provocative. Clearly, these kids are unashamed of their bodies.
Mann's work has been exhibited at The Chrysler Museum of Art since the early 1980s, when her elegant platinum prints of figures in silken slips were included in the group show ``Not Fade Away.''
For her slide talk, Mann presented work covering her entire career, from her first picture - a nude, photographed at age 17 - to the series on her kids. She ended her talk with her latest pictures - intimate nude scenes of herself and her husband Larry.
Pictures of the couple making love were a bit shocking, a bit on the exhibitionist side. Mann explained she was trying to break ground, that men had made such portraits honoring their female lovers - but she knew of no women who had done the same for their man.
One couldn't help but wonder, if these two had less perfect bodies, would they be so willing to exhibit their love-making? Still, to be married for 25 years, and to remain so passionately involved, is admirable - if a taboo subject. Besides, isn't marital bliss supposed to be sacred?
Looking at least a decade younger than her age, Mann wore a demure suit and pearls. She looked so young, in fact, she appeared to be playing dress-up - like her daughter Jessie in a picture Mann took of her at age 5. Mann's hair was braided in back the same as her mother's hair was for an early photo.
For Sally Mann, picture-taking was controversial from the start. That first nude picture almost got her kicked out of boarding school, she said. That's when she learned that ``photography can be dangerous.''
Early on, she also made wistful, evocative photographs of the sweet green hills around her Rockbridge County home.
Then, during one of her pregnancies, Mann photographed herself nude and in profile each week, then created a flip book of her swelling belly for the birth announcement.
``I innocently sent that birth announcement all over town,'' she said. ``I always think things are perfectly all right, and find out later that it's offending somebody.''
In the mid-'80s, she made portraits of 12-year-old girls in her town. The pictures unflinchingly presented the girls' lives and alluded to their budding sexuality. One 11-year-old girl was photographed with her newborn child in her bedroom, still very much a girl's room with shelves of dolls predicting her path.
Then, while her kids were very young and playing nearby, she worked on a series of photos focused on odd objects she had thrown into a small plastic pool. Eventually, it developed into ``a little compost pile of photo props that became fetid and gross.''
Soon after, she got caught up in photographing her children. ``It took me a long time to realize there's real art to be made while being a mother.''
She tried to make real pictures that showed the rashes, bumps and throwing-up as well as the natural sensuality of childhood.
It seemed natural to photograph the children naked. ``I was raised in a peculiar way,'' she said. ``It was said I didn't wear clothes until I was 7. I was basically a feral child.
``We lived out in the country. And we lived like animals. I now realize my life was unusual.''
Her mission sometimes was beyond her. When son Emmett was hit by a car, she just knew she couldn't photograph him, though he pulled through it just fine.
One disturbing incident came when the Wall Street Journal, in 1991, reprinted a nude portrait of 4-year-old Virginia with censoring black bars across her chest and genitals.
Mann shared the letter Virginia wrote to the Journal, in her 5-year-old scrawl: ``Dear Sir: I don't like the way you crossed me out.''
The next few slides showed Virginia being photographed nude, but with her hands over her private parts. As Mann described these sessions, her voice cracked. You could tell she almost broke into tears.
Those dirty-minded people had made Virginia feel ashamed of her body. They had banished her from paradise. With a word from the serpent, she was out of Eden.
When the Mirabella reporter recently asked her if she had any regrets, she said, ``it was a great relief to say no. And the children say it with even greater vehemence,'' she said.
``I want to make people think. I'm not guileless. I want to make art. If making my art upsets people, I don't see any harm in upsetting people.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
SALLY MANN/Courtesy Houk Friedman Gallery
Innocently provocative: Lexington, Va., photographer Sally Mann with
her three children.
by CNB