Talking About Two Controversial Books by Sally Man

Note: This is my opinion, not an unbiased look at the works or a clinical analyzation of them.

Sally Mann often used a very old style of photography to capture her images. It was Silver jell on a glass plate in a box style camera. This made black and white images of remarkable depth for the kind processing that was involved. Obviously more refined than in the days of old when the process was first popularized. Although there are some remarkable images from the 1860’s out there.

I’m going to be talking about the social perception of the books, “What Remains,” and “Intimate Family.” Both of these books caused an uproar in society when they came out and continue to do so until today. To a lesser extent there is the inclusion of, “At Twelve” in this light, but I’m not talking about that one today.

First, I’ll talk about, “What Remains.” This book of photos is about the process of death and decay – how we return to the earth as it were. Most of it is shot on a “body farm” where they study the decay of human remains that are laying on the ground outside (mostly) for forensic research purposes. This gives us the knowledge that is used to determine how long a body has been there and the conditions it was exposed to.

The indignity that was perceived by the public in this case was in their minds outrageous. It was claimed it was the exploitation of the dead for profit and had no artistic merit at all.

The fact that people had lovingly donated their bodies to science in this matter was not in the minds of the critics at all. They only saw something that society deems as taboo. We have as a society disassociated ourselves from death and decay.

I find it interesting that we also at the same time glamourize forensic science in the mass media on TV shows and movies – yet when the reality of the situation is presented on film, it is somehow disgusting and a violation of so-called dignity of the dead. Personally, I see the dead as an empty shell – the person is no longer there; it is not a thing that I would label dignified at any point.

The idea seemed to be to show us returning to a state of nature in my opinion. This is natural. This is the way of life for the most part in the world we live in. Creatures die, decompose, get eaten and return to the earth. I think she wanted to show us that we are still part of nature, even if we demand otherwise in our social dialog and ethics.

This is by far not a glamour photography book. It is the disturbing reality of what we really are after the end of our lifespan. Our society does not seem to want to acknowledge that we die it seems, so this is disgusting and wrong in its way of thinking.

Now let’s talk about, “Intimate Family.” This book full on pissed off a lot of people and Sally Mann was accused of exploiting her children for the sexual gratification of disturbed adults. There was outcry that any gallery would show the photos even. Police intervened and removed the image of a 4-year-old in a dress with no underwear on and her privates exposed in one case. The same images were used to sell papers, with the child having bars over her eyes, chest and privates. The fact she had a dress on, and her nipples where not exposed is meaningless in the light of the real exploitation here – that of the money driven media (for profit, not for documentation of any kind).

The book had candid images of her children doing day-to-day things in a rural setting and at times they had no clothing on or little clothing on. To be honest, at the time these photos where taken, and in the light of the social setting, this was really nothing special at all – it was simply how things happened.

I was raised to not see nudity as sexual myself, so I honestly see nothing wrong with these images. It’s people who will project their own sexualization of nudity onto a child that has no sense of sexual identity and into a setting where it is 100% natural to be nude and free spirited.

I literally can’t wrap my head around the idea that the images in this photo book are in any way exploitive or sexualizing children. But our society does in fact sexualize children all of the time. Look at child beauty pageants. These function on a base level to me. They go out of their way to show children in poses and movements that are overtly sexual when an adult does them. You can’t tell me this is not totally intentional. They are literally marketing to a specific market demographic and at the same time exploiting the hyper competitive nature of the parents of these children.

Sally Mann on the other hand is just showing a slice of her family life at the time. The book was not published for 10 years after the photos were taken and the impact of them on society and possibly on the family was talked about with the children. This was not something that would be a shock to them later in life.

I find it interesting that no one talks about her work with portraits or nature photography – this being more impactful on her body of work that these two books. A loss analogy of this society seeing Bobby McFerrin only for “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” when in fact there was a great deal of other works he had produced. In both cases hyper fixation on a small part of a large body of works is fixated on and this is what the artists are known for. I think this does their work, and society in general a disservice.

In general, I don’t see exploitation in either of her books – I see a desire to show life and death for what it is and part of the human condition on a basic level. There are intonations of course in individual images that stand out as expressions in their own light in these works – this is to be expected. But I’m not seeing in general, or in the case of any specific image, exploitation at all.

But in the end, we all see the world in our own minds’ version of reality. If that reality is poisoned with the sexualization of innocent children, then that is what people will see. So the work will always be seen in a tainted light, because society has been conditioned to be tainted in it’s views.