Phtography Essay -- Art, Sally Mann

Sally Manns photographic work has received both reverence and controversy, most notably her book Immediate Family (1994), which contains nude sculpture and suggestive photographs of her three children, has also sparked overwhelming critical discussions and speculation, whilst challenging the prevailing concepts of family and puerility in the United States. Produced immediately after the Reagan revolution, which reinstated family values and a to a greater extent conventional moral sensibility as vital to the framework of public policy (Berlant, 1997, p. 7), Manns work has resulted in her immersed into debates surrounding child pornography, the inversion of familial relationships, motherhood, and conveying a complex notion of the maternal gaze.Hlne Cixous states that binary oppositions underline most of Western philosophical thought e.g. male/female, officious/passive, natural/unnatural, logical/emotional (Conley, 2000, p.148) which have the effect of forming a set of standardised va lues within patriarchal society. Conversely, Immediate Family moves towards a state where what is traditionally considered antipodal co-exists, where neither is repressed, and offers an alternatively paradigmatic relationship between binary opposites. In addition to this, by considering Manns work in terms of Cixouss understanding of the Freudian concept of the Uncanny, a more fluid and permeable reading of Immediate Family can be produced. The Uncanny is characterised by a strangeness that uncovers what is hidden (anxiety) and by doing so, effects a disturbing transformation of the familiar into the unfamiliar (Jackson, 1981, p.65), resulting in an inability to decipher what is considered to be real and what is thought to be imaginary. Mann is known for ten... ... is ultimately the girls subversion of the border dividing life and death. The familiar becomes dauntingly unfamiliar, as with dreams that slip past our perceptual defences triggering a response but never quite bring out their meaning (Williams and Newton, 2007, p.207). Subsequently, this expresses a blurring of boundaries and embodies the notion of metamorphosis where divisions cease to be defined. The animation/inactivity duality of the body defies the binary opposites of rational thinking, and in doing so, introduces the Uncanny into this photograph. The more star analyses and observes this photograph, the more it constantly shifts across the prescribed boundaries of illusion and reality, often entering controversial areas. Winter Squash demonstrates how Mann takes the viewer from a visual affirmation of childhood and youth, to an inherent fear of death.