Sally Mann Analysis

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Sally Mann was raised with her families twelve boxer dogs and has been taking photographs of the Virginia south, where she is from, for years. She was born in 1951 and has been taking photos since she was a teenager. Her work is beautiful, she photographs everything and has published ten photo series books and one memoir of her life and family history, according to her website. Her first book At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women has thirty-six photos, some with descriptions or stories, of twelve-year-old girls showing their spirit and emotions of becoming a young woman. Her second photography book Immediate Family features her three children, Emmet, Jessie, and Virginia. They were all under the age of twelve in intimate photos on their family …show more content…
Woodward, an art critic for The New York Times, wrote an article in 1992 in response to Immediate Family called “The Disturbing Photography of Sally Mann.” In this article, Woodward stated that the nudity of the children’s photos caused problems with most publications, The Wall Street Journal had to censor 4-year-old Virginia’s photograph with black bars across her eyes, breasts, and genitals to run her photo. Woodward also questions in his article in The Times that, as their mother how could she publish these? Also, how can the children consent to the photos being as young as they are? Especially if the artist is their …show more content…
It made her feel, for the first time, that there was something wrong not only with the pictures but with her body. Heartbreakingly, she wore her shorts and shirt into the bathtub the night after she had seen the picture with the black bars. (147)
Virginia also wrote Raymond Sokolov, who wrote the article with the black barred picture, a letter, “Dear Sir, I don’t like the way you crossed me out. I will be 6 on Friday. Virginia Mann.” After he got the letter Sokolov and the editor at the Journal both wrote an apology letter to Virginia (148). Mann also tells us that her children had input during the editing process of Immediate Family, “each child was given the possible pictures and asked to edit out any that he or she didn’t want to be published” (140). That quote is showing that Mann had consent from her children when publishing the

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