Sally Mann is known as one of America’s most renowned photographers, winning many awards and accolades throughout her career. Many of her photo collections are known to be controversial by the subject matter of her work.
I found this photo to be especially controversial among the photos in Mann’s Immediate Family collection. The photo above is black and white and a naked child is laying on a naked adult’s lap. The child is holding the adult’s pinky with their own and the adult is touching the child’s neck. The child seems to be limp and half asleep on the adult’s lap.
The photos of her children in the collection Immediate Family are especially controversial because the children are posing either in their underwear or completely naked. According to The Guardian, Mann’s critics did not consider her work artfully tasteful, but instead too intimate and that they bordered on child pornography. However, according to Sally Mann in The Guardian article, she meant to capture the beauty and transience of her children. She did not feel as if she was exploiting her children to anything wrong, but instead, she was capturing the beauty in the everyday life of her precious and growing children.
Mann, Sally. “Untitled”. 1992. Immediate Family. sallymann.com. February 2021. https://www.sallymann.com/new-gallery-1/ox4zbl2qayaolf5lf2pk00qop9ixtm
Morrison, Blake. “Sally Mann: The Naked and The Dead.” The Guardian, 28 May 2010, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/may/29/sally-mann-naked-dead.
You captured the two sides of the controversy well. Veery thorough.