Critical Review

Critical Review

Being one of the most recognizable photos, the image of “ Emmet, Jessie & Virginia” also includes most of the controversies: child pornography, gender issue and arguments about Sally Mann as a mother. The image is originally from <Immediate Family>, a series produced by once named “America’s best photographer” Sally Mann from 1985.  

Born in Lexington in 1951, Sally Mann spent 10 years taking photos of her children and made the series <Immediate Family>. Photos of the children living in the same rural South America where Sally Mann grew up were included. Because of the unordinary style of the series, it attracted controversies immediately once published. Most are concerned about large amounts of nude pictures in the series, signs of child pornography. They even doubted if the children can grew up just like others.

Sally Mann gained her fame and enjoyed success that no other photographers in the history had experienced through the photos of her children. The photos which recorded the children in nude and the girls imitate adults. In some of the photos such as Candy Cigarette, young Jessie posed as if she is posing for a magazine, wearing a necklace and looked much older than her real age.

There are some other similar photos which to some others are child pornography. Although Sally Mann explained that there is less privacy in rural South America, the children wouldn’t have to put on clothes when they go swimming because there is hardly anyone within miles. My research had found that the nude photographs should be considered with its very own cultural background.

 “What adults understand as the sexuality of children is always defined by the adult world; in this view, childhood is not fixed but culturally produced” (Edge, Baylis)[1].

Sally Mann’s photographs are like no other family collection. In most of her photos, what had been shown are the children in uncomfortable state: rebelling, sad, sick, bloodied, angry and even death. The photos of the children carry unordinary sense that will instantly catch the attention of viewers.

When looked into the subject of photo setting, a relevant composed work by Larry Sulton explained that photos also create mythology. What Sally Mann tried to do through her photos is to tell the others

“a story of what it is to grow up. It is a complicated story and sometimes we try to take on the grand themes: anger, love, death, sensuality, and beauty. But we tell it all without fear and without shame.” [2]-

When the others question whether or not the children are forced to participate in the photos and how the images were produced, Sally Mann defended that:

“And any parent knows that you can’t force a child to make art; they have to cooperate, they have to want to be part of the process…… I didn’t pry these pictures from them — they gave them to me. Remember that and the images take on a wholly different meaning — no deep psychological manipulations or machinations, just the straight-forward, everyday telling of a story.”[3]

One thing for sure is how Sally Mann influenced the children. Jessie had once mentioned what the fames bring to them at an interview. She herself was quite into art and was used to the spotlight. She later become actively involved in art herself. Yet Emmett and Virginia had totally different reactions. The former was lost and did not know where he was. While the latter one just wanted to be back to normal life. Virginia did walk away and went on to do law school.

The photo of Wet Bed brings up moral issue in regarding to Sally Mann who sells the photos for profit. While others argue privacy should stay their way, Sally Mann had decided to show the photos to the public, regardless what this may affect the children.

But she may have seen things differently. The photos from Immediate Family shows a place like Eden, somewhere like lost paradise where lived her beloved children. She chose photographs to express love for her children. We see the beautiful children and the innocence in their eyes. Sally Mann seized their childhood which may appear to be disturbing for some others, as if she was afraid they will grow up too quickly.

If producing the series is for the love of the children, then it should probably just stay in the way. But the photos were not produced for an ordinary family photo collection, instead, they were meant for the others outside the family.

Sally Mann may have achieved her fame with the controversial photograph series. But it is actually achieved by sacrificing the childhood of her children. Because once the photos exposed under the spotlight, the children were never able to return to their original life.

1, sourced from:http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/11/theory-sally-manns-immediate-family.html 

2, soureced from: http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/story/mann.html,

3, Sourced from : http://www.cvm.qc.ca/mbenoit/psocial/main.html,

Writing Plan

Writing Plan

This writing plan will help me write my critical review to end my research. I will be demonstrating my review in approximately 800-1,000 words. I will be discussing Sally Mann’s image including the research findings I had found from previous blog entries. To remind myself, I will outline them as below:

Introduction:

To start with, I will talk about the image and Sally Mann’s background. I will also introduce a little bit on how the image may had been produced. It is important to understand these, with the researching findings I have done earlier, they will both contribute to my final critical review.

Main Argument:

The main argument will be whether or not Sally Mann had carried out her full responsibility as a mother. Although I have now understood better about Sally Mann’s motive in creating the photos as to show the story of “growing up”, her role as a mother is still controversial by putting her children under the spotlight.  

Counter Argument:

Photographing could be her way of expressing love for the children.

Conclusion:

She may have achieved what she wanted for her art. But her name is made by sacrificing her children’s childhood.

I-Map

I-Map

YingYingXueCMP I-Map: Emmet,Jessie&Virginia,1989,Sally Mann

Research Findings

Research Findings

After more than seven weeks into the research for my blog, I have now come to the end of my research for the image of “Emmet, Jessie & Virginia”. To conclude, this research had been rewarding and surprised me with new knowledge and skills developed through the process. I had explored the original subject and expanded the research alongside.

First of all, the image introduced me to Sally Mann who I haven’t heard about. I then learnt more about the image as well as Sally Mann’s other photographs from portraits to the landscape of South America. It opens a new door for me to the paradise of Sally Mann’s art world. To summarize the findings of the image I have so far conducted, we can go back to the initial questions I had first raised when seeing the image. I had looked at the following questions in order to understand more about the image:

• Who is Sally Mann?
• Who are the children and what is the story of the photo?
• Why do they appear in nude?
• Why is it in black in white?

The questions are not as simple as they appear. In fact, I realized from the very beginning that the answers to these questions were going to be imperative in order to gain a deeper understanding of the photograph. I looked specifically at each question and made notes of my research findings while I updated my blog.

I went through the profiles of Sally Mann carefully and reorganized them at early stage of my research. It is important to know her background and how she grew up as well as how she was influenced. In this way, I can always look back at her profile and apply for the future research. Then I studied Sally Mann’s children and background of Immediate Family. This is to understand how the photo was produced. As I found out from later research, Sally Mann explained that it is a work of collaboration with her children.

Driven by my curiosity, I derived more specific questions from each initial question. For example, when I am doing the research for second question, I would want to find out more on how the children may had been changed by participating in Sally Mann’s photographs. Going through Sally Mann’s Immediate Family, I found that the children who posed in this unusual collection always carry unpleasant looks: rebelling, angry, sharp etc. This is something unusual, so I went on the research with another question.

I then observed into the subject of photo staging and developed long research entry which not only include analysis of Sally Mann’s photos but also relevant works by other photographers. I carried on exploring and kept expanding each subject in later research as well. In order to find out more about why Sally Mann staged the photos, I compared Sally Mann’s photos with other famous photographers who produced similar or relevant photos. It gives me a full understanding of the commons and differences between photos by different artists. In this way, I get to understand the image better.

Sally Mann used camera as her tool of art and created series of photos that caught the attention of viewers with the unordinary look of her children. She presented us a different childhood for a purpose. It is her way of expressing what she thinks. When others may be concentrating on child pornography or her role as mother, I tried to analyze these aspects concluding both the good side of bad side of it. Because there is no certain answer to each question and I can not make judgment without hard evidence.

When analyzing the image in order to answer my questions, I always went back to Sally Mann’s background. For instance, when I looked at the question of why the children appeared in nude, I immediately thought about the childhood of Sally Mann herself. Because she was brought up in the same way, and this reminds to think about culture background of the image before making any false judgment. Similarly, I studied how she was influenced by her father and why she used black and white.

The black and white photos are timeless and made the characters more powerful. I was quite interested about this subject and looked specifically into the history of photography. I also looked at color photographs and compared with classic monochrome photos. This gives a better understanding of Sally Mann’s black and white photos.   

Although I had managed to keep my research ideas and the blog entry in a very strict order that seems to give a good answer my initial questions, the reseach itself is like a cross-stitch. I had always found myself lost in it whilst I carried on the research. I was eager to explore each subject and struggled to find evidences to build up my understanding of the image which I-map will be a perfect solution.

Bibliography

Books:

Barthes,R.(1993), Mythologies, Vintage

Sally Mann(1992), Immediate Family, Aperture, New York

LiuZheng(2004), The Chinese, Steidl/ICP, ISBN-13: 978-3865210371

Shore, S. (2010), The Nature of Photographs: A Primer, Phaidon Press

Rush, M. (1999), New Media in Late 20th Century Art, Thames & Hudson

Gilles Peress(1995), The Silence, Scalo Publishers, ISBN-13: 978-1881616382

Sally Mann(1988),At Twelve : Portraits of Young Women, Aperture, New York

Michael Auping(2002), Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 110, Modern Art Museum,

Phillip Jones Griffiths(2001), Vietnam Inc., Phaidon Press Ltd, ISBN-13: 978-0714841526

Robert Doisneau(1991), Photographic Credits, Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-41077-1

Pamela Roberts(2010), The Genius of Color Photography, Goodman, ISBN 978 1 84796 0146

Jiao Bo(2005),My Mom and Dad , HuaYi Publication Company, I S B N：9787801426970,2005

Stanley Greene(2004), Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003, Trolley, ISBN-13: 978-0714841526

Anthony LaSala(2007), The world’s top photographers:Nudes, Rotovision, ISBN-13: 978-2940378272

THE Reader’s Digest Association Ltd.(1993).When, Where, Why and how it happened, ISBN 0-276-42105-1

Documentaries

Schindler’s List (1993), Steven Spielberg, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTKEJwt_RI4, accessed on 24th Nov 10

Ashes and Snows(2005),Gregory Colbert, http://www.ashesandsnow.org/, accessed on 25th Nov 10

Journals :

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/27/magazine/the-disturbing-photography-of-sally-mann.html, Accessed on 26th Oct 10

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-or-abuse-a-lament-for-lost-innocence-2078397.html, accessed on 31st Oct 10

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/may/29/sally-mann-naked-dead , accessed on 08th Nov 10

Websites :

http://www.houkgallery.com/artists/sally-mann/, accessed on 14th Oct10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Mann    , accessed on 15th Oct 10

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mann/ , accessed on 15th Oct 10

http://wayneyang.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/jessie-mann-interview/, accessed on 18 Oct 10

http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/story/mann.html, accessed on 20 Oct 10 

http://talentdevelop.com/motherhood2.html, accessed on 26th Oct 10

http://members.cox.net/logophore/issues/cult/bank_cult_mann.html, accessed on 26th Oct 10

http://www.nerve.com/content/nole-me-tangere-the-family-photographs-of-sally-mann, accessed on 28th Oct 10

http://www.photoquotes.com/showquotes.aspx?id=431&name=Mann,Sally#1432, assessed on 31st Oct 10

http://www.cvm.qc.ca/mbenoit/psocial/main.html, Accessed on 02 Nov 10

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/11/theory-sally-manns-immediate-family.html , accessed on 03rd Nov 10

http://mocoloco.com/art/archives/003540.php   , accessed on 03rd Nov 10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Mann  , accessed on 03rd Nov 10

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Model_Family.html , accessed on 05th Nov 10

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/11/theory-sally-manns-immediate-family.html, accessed on 05th Nov 10

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Model_Family.html, accessed on 13^th Nov 10       

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=Virginia%20at%20Four&page=&f=Title&object=2001.197, accessed on 13^th Nov 10

http://globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Wikipedia:Depictions_of_nudity#Children_as_subjects, accessed on 18th Nov 10

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mann/clip2.html, accessed on 20th Nov 10

http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/stilphotography.htm, Accessed on 20th Nov 10

http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=503, accessed on 23rd Nov 10

http://www.allbestarticles.com/arts-and-entertainment/photography/the-magic-of-black-and-white-photography.html, accessed on 25^th Nov 10

http://www.ashesandsnow.org/en/home.php, accessed on 25^th Nov 10

Images:

As detailed in blog entries

RD15-Sally Mann’s Color Photo

Sally Mann’s Color Photos (Further to Question 4)

After a detailed research into black and white photography, I now have better understanding and knowledge about photography art.

It is not easy to find Sally Mann’s color photos. The majority of her photos are in large black and white print. I had luckily found the belowing two photos during the research. The first one shows little Virginia posing besides trumpet vine, wearing no clothes at all. The other one I remember was titled ” Jessie with big burger”, but unfortunately I forgot to save the website and can not find out the original information. This is the only image in the entire blog that doesn’t have a reference.

Untitled (Virginia with Trumpet Vine), 1991. sourced from: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=Untitled%20(Virginia%20with%20Trumpet%20Vine)&page=&f=Title&object=2001.204, accessed on 24th Nov 10)

(Jessie Mann and the big burger, websource unknown)

I used photoshop to make the two photos into black and white. It is very obvious how colors changed the sensation of each photo. The colors give the character and background full description and make photos vibrant. The photos in colors are more realistic. But once changed to black and white, the photos are less vibrant. It instantly changed to mysterious but at the same time classic and elegant photos.

I was kind of hoping to see joyful children in color photos. Yet it appeared that the girls are carrying same look like always: sad, serious and even mature. They are not looking at the camera but instead posed like they are into deep thought of something. Something that only themself knows in mind and others don’t.

This is quite disturbing from what most people would expect such as a big simle from the young children’s face. The two photos show Jessie and Virginia who both had sctraches on their bodies. Even the first one which Virginia stands right next to the beautiful vibrant red trumpet vine, the photo still gives the viewer a sad sensation. Now going back to the previous image “Emmet, Jessie & Virginia” which I had been doing the research for couple weeks, I see something in common of all photos.

It is the look of the children. How Sally Mann set up the scene and why the children appeared in nude as well as why the photo was taken in black and white were all looked into briefly. Suposely if she was imitating an old painting from early art, what remains the most interesting is why the children were set up with that kind of look.

In precious research, I had looked into this subject particularly and also come across photo staging. I also looked at other staged photographs by some other famous photographs in order to find out the nature of creative photographs. My research also looked into how Sally Mann created the series in colloboration with her children.

My question remained unsolved regarding the setting up of the photo. Although I now have better understanding of Sally Mann’s work, to understand her world of art, I will definitely need to expand my knowledge in photography art in the future. But one thing for sure, although Sally Mann explained her work in the opening of Immediate family that it was simply because :

“The place is important; the time is summer. It’s any summer, but the place is home and people here are my family.”

It sounds like a book dedicated for her children, that all the photos she make are because the love of her. They were carefully composed as Sally Mann explained herself in an interview :

“We are spinning a story of what it is to grow up. It is a complicated story and sometimes we try to take on the grand themes: anger, love, death, sensuality, and beauty. But we tell it all without fear and without shame.” soureced from: http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/story/mann.html, accessed on 20 Oct 10 

But the series is not like any other family collection, not something the children will be looking back at and say ” this is what our life was like”. They will obviously experience the story of “growing up” when they grow up. They don’t need to look back photos which shows themself in childhood trying to imitate an adult. To me, the photos Sally Mann took was meant for the public. It is something she produced and determined to show to the others and convey her ideas about childhood.

In Response to Place – Photographs of Sally Mann, from : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJvYxxrLtQg&NR=1, accessed on 26th Nov 10

The video above also mentioned Sally Mann’s first color landscape. For the photos for took for Mexico, Sally Mann spoke in the video that

“I didn’t want them to be bright and garish, you know Kodak colors. I wanted them to be very very soft, you have vibrancy but at the same time timeless, and that is what I am hoping for.”

I would like to go on further research of Sally Mann’s photos. However, with very limited time and a few more last things including critical review to be finished in a few days, I will probably have to stop here.

SD-Week 8 (28th Nov 10)

Study Diary-Week 8 (28th Nov 10)

With just few days to go before the deadline of this blog, I didn’t not feel relax at last at all. As a matter of fact, I am still not quite content to end the research. Despite all the efforts I contributed in the past few weeks, there are still a lot of things out there for me to discover and learn. And I believe that is the fun of the research. Apart from the entries and things I have already found, it made me realized how broad knowledge is.

The process of both researching and learning are enjoyable. Yet as a transfer student from a different major, I started much later than the others. It did not put out my passion and desire to finish the research, but the limited time does affect me to expand a further research.

With a critical review ahead of me to be finished, I think that it is time for me to gather up the research with last entry about Sally Mann’s photos. I really appreciate of the task which taught me so many things. And the skills I developed through the long tiring but educational process are going to be really useful.

RD14-Monochrome in media

Monochrome in media (further to Q4 of listed questions)

I have looked at both histories of black and white photography and color photography. It is not hard to find that even today, monochrome is frequently used in contemporary media. In terms of monochrome applied in media, the documentaries by Steven Spielberg and Gregory Colbert are both very inspiring. The monochrome photographs by the latter one are absolutely amazing and impressive. This may reveal and help to explain more about why Sally Mann used monochrome for her work.

Schindler’s List (1993), Steven Spielberg, accessed on 24th Nov 10

Schindler’s List is a 1993 American epic drama film about Oskar Schindler,  a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust  by employing them in his factories. The film was directed by Steven Spierlberg, and based on the novel Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally. I happened to find this trailer from youtube which is great.

The decision to shoot the film mainly in black and white lent to the documentary-style of cinematography, which cinematographer Janusz Kaminski compared to German Expressiosm and Italian neorealism. Kamiński said that

he wanted to give a timeless sense to the film, so the audience would “not have a sense of when it was made.” Spielberg was following suit with “virtually everything I’ve seen on the Holocaust… which have largely been stark, black and white images.” Universal chairman Tom Pollock asked Spielberg to shoot the film in a color negative, to allow color VHS copies of the film to be sold, but Spielberg did not want “to beautify events.” ( sourced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schindler’s_List#Filming, accessed on 25^th Nov 10)

 

(Unknown Titel, Gregory Colbert, Online Image from : http://sufigeek.tumblr.com/post/1272057359/upthespout-devilchic05-c-gregory-colbert , accessed on 24th Oct 10)

“When I started Ashes and Snow in 1992, I set out to explore the relationship between man and animals from the inside out.”—Gregory Colbert .

I would also like to include the amazing work by Gregory Colbert. He had also used monochrome photos to show the world a peaceful paradise. In his photos, human beings and animals get along like families.  And to show this, he had produced both moving and still images in monochrome. The picture above, which shows a young Indian girl touching the nose of an elephant. It is beautiful and creates a sense of pure and the interaction between human being and animals.

Canadian-born artist Gregory Colbert began his career in Paris making documentary films about social issues. He has been filming and photographing elephants, whales, manatees, eagles, orangutans, and other animals on more than thirty expeditions to such places as Egypt, Burma, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Ethiopia, Namibia, Tonga, the Azores, Antarctica, and Borneo. The images of Ashes and Snow explore wondrous interactions between man and animal dissolving the boundaries between humans and other species. Gregory Colbert’s photographic artworks capture extraordinary moments of contact between man and animal. None of the images have been digitally collaged or superimposed; they record what the artist himself saw through the lens of his camera.

(Sourced from : http://www.ashesandsnow.org/en/home.php, accessed on 25^th Nov 10)

 Ashes and Snows(2005),Gregory Colbert, accessed on 25th Nov 10

The project has been embraced by visitors around the world, and inspired such critical responses as “A new master is born,” (Photo magazine) A clip from Ashes and Snows shows a visual feast of moving monochrome images.

The work by two world class masters not only just showed us how monochrome was applied in the media. In Schindler’s list, we see the event played in black and white which is timeless and also displayed the event in its solemn way. Because of the fact and the nature of the event being disconsolate, a black and white shooting tells the story in a perfectly fine way. 

And the film as well as the still images in Ashes and Snow showed the viewers a place like heaven and the beauty of eternity. The monochrome had created a sacred place which color photos may not be able to achieve. This brings the question of beauty in monochrome, how does it play the magic? I have found an interesting point from the website source:

An impassioned artist always strives to create something uniquely different within his genre. He is ultimately compelled to create a difference in his medium that conveys his unique perspective. When photography is done in black and white, an artful touch emerges from the subject matter. Passion coupled with style gives a distinctive edge to this genre, captivating a viewer’s attention. It is its innate magical quality which simply enthralls the onlooker. Photography can capture the essence of an object within the frame of a camera. The soul of that thing is seemingly seized and frozen; forever in the picture. Black and white photography delicately reveals the subtle interplay of light and shadow, while introducing an element of mystery into the photograph. It is usually more poetic and sensitive than color photography. (Sourced from : http://www.allbestarticles.com/arts-and-entertainment/photography/the-magic-of-black-and-white-photography.html, accessed on 25^th Nov 10)

SD-Week 7 (26th Nov 10)

Study Diary-Week 7 (26th Nov 10)

It had been quite a few weeks into the research. Although I had come across a lot of challenges during the long process, the process had gained me a precious experience. I had learnt a lot from a range of subjects and had access to a wider world of critical research.

To analyze a work by a famous photographer was something I did not think I could handle. Yet it had been great working through. Not only did I learn how to look at the question in a critical way, but I also learnt new knowledge in relating to art and photography.

It is a great opportunity to improve my skill of self-learning. I had enjoyed observing deeper into a specific subject at this stage. But then I also realized how limited knowledge I obtained and it is always important to learn something new. I am still not quite well in writing the research neatly and most of the research entries are kind of in a mess state.

Recently I am working to analyze the theory in the colors applied in general photography. This will help for the final stage of my research as I was always curious to know more about black and white photographers. Sally Mann’s photos are a great choice for me to start with.

I have planned to look more of similar artwork as well as other media forms in next week. This will include the documentary films by Steven Spielberg and Gregory Colbert.

RD13-Color Photos VS Monochrome

Color Photos VS Monochrome(further to Q4 of listed questions) 

After a brief research into the history of photography, I would like to find out more about color photos and how it compared with black and white photos. I looked at the book <The Genius of Color Photography> which covers every major technical and artistic breakthrough in the development of color during the past century.

Photographers were striving for color after photography had been announced to the world in 1839. There was much experimentation throughout the nineteenth century until, in 1907, the Lumiere brothers launched the first commercial colour process, the autochrome, on to an eager market. For the first time, realistic colour reproduction was achievable for both amateur and professional alike.

In 1940 the American photographer Paul Outerbridge, who knew more about colour than most, explained colour theory thus:” When you look at a colored object, remember that the color you see is the color of colors it reflects, for all the other colors that it might have been have been absorbed by it”. It is easy to take color for granted; after all, it is how we see the world every day. But color plays such an integral part in our emotions and in our perception of a scene that knowledge of the nature of color and how to capture it in your images will give impact and expression to your photography.

On the contrast, monochrome photography is photography where the image produced has a single hue, rather than recording the colours of the object that was photographed. It includes all forms of black and white photography, which produce images containing tones of grey ranging from black to white. Most modern black and white films, called panchromatic films, record the entire visible spectrum.

Black and white photography is considered more subtle and interpretive, and less realistic than colour photography. Monochrome images are not direct renditions of their subjects, but are abstractions from reality, representing colors in shades of grey. In computer terms, this is often called greyscale. 

When cameras were applied with visual art rather than simple tools, photography had been expanded to be used for fine art photography and documentary photography. At first, fine art photographers tried to imitate painting styles. Many artists argued that photography was the mechanical reproduction of an image. If photography is authentically art, then photography in the context of art would need redefinition, such as determining what component of a photograph makes it beautiful to the viewer.

All photography was originally monochrome, or black and white. Even after color film was readily available, black-and-white photography continued to dominate for decades, due to its lower cost and its “classic” photographic look.

In fact there are still lot of artists are still creating “classic” monochrome photos, i is also largely applied in contemporary media, I will look into this particular subject further.

Reference : 

Pamela Roberts(2010), The Genius of Color Photography, Goodman, ISBN 978 1 84796 0146

Langford, Michael (2000). Basic Photography (7th ed.). Oxford: Focal Press.ISBN-0-240-51592-7 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography, accessed on 23rd Nov 10

http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=503, accessed on 23rd Nov 10

RD12-Origin of Photography

Origin of photography (further to Q4 of listed questions) 

In last entry, I had just a bit about how Sally Mann was influenced in her photography by her father as well as her use of antique camera. I believe it is something deeper, the history of black-and-white photography that plays the magic. Most people would consider it as classic because it is how photography started. To find out more, I decided to look into the origin of photography and hopefully can find creditable evidence to support this. I had read through the book <When, Where, Why and how it happened> by the Reader’s Digest Association Ltd. which recorded 100 of the history’s most dramatic events. The birth of photography was also counted as one of the most important event that changed the world. I had managed to reorganize the event in short:

The first pinhole camera was invented by Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham) who lived around 1000AD, The first and also oldest known surviving photograph was taken by Joseph Nicephore Niepce. One summer day in 1827, the retired office of the French Army pointed a primitive camera out of his study window and placed it so that the lens cast an image onto a pewter plate coated with light-sensitive bitumen. The image-a pear tree between the roof of a barn and a pigeon loft – was formed on the plate after about 8 hours.

After the death of Niepce in 1833, a French painter Louis Daguerre who Niepce worked with from 1829 continued to work on th process. In 1839, Daguerre introduced his daguerreotype process to the world, the first daguerreotype, which showed some plaster casts arranged on a windowsill, had in fact been taken two years earlier. In the 1830s the Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot made the breakthrough that enabled any number of positive prints to be made from a photographic negative. Through the development, especially by Richard Leach Maddox who found a process in 1870s, which the glass plates were supplied already covered with a dry emulsion of silver iodide and gelatin. The method allowed an increasing number of amateurs to take up photography – a term taken from the Greek photos, or “light”, and graphein, “ to draw”.

Photography became even more easily accessible in the 1880s, when the inventor George Eastman(1854-1932) found a film medium to replace glass plates. In conjunction with the first Kodak lightweight camera, photography for the first time became a hobby for the masses.

(Six-pounder Wiard Gun at the Washington Arsenal, 1862, by Mathew Brady, Online Image from : http://www.leninimports.com/mathew_brady_1.html, accessed on 21^st Nov 10)

Although the photographic equipment of the 1850s was extremely cumbersome, it was portable enough for some photographers to begin documenting wars. The Austro-Scandinavian conflict in 1859 was recorded by a number of photographers who for the first time showed the real horrors of war. The American Matthew Brady believed that “ the camera is the eye of history”. The photographs he and his 19 assistants took provide a striking visual account of the American Civil War from the side of the Union forces.

The above is a photo by Matthew Brady taken in American Civil War. It is a scene from more than a century ago, yet every single detail of the photo stayed how they were. It is a photo that brings us the story of what happened at Washington Arsenal in 1862, presented to us visually and freezed the scene. We then take it for granted, this is how a photo should be, even it is in black and white. I can imagine the thrill that people get to see a real life scene from a camera that is easier produced than paintings and most importantly, it tells truth from up to down. Amazingly, photos are timeless and that is why centuries later, we will still be able to know what happened in the American Civil War.

It is more about the very nature of photographs: it tells a story. With or without color, it had changed the world. We appreciate the contribution of cameras and that is why even today, we still enjoy and admire an old photo, in black and white.  It become certain tool of art without a second doubt, black and white photos are like set patterns. Its imitations of old photos carries a sense of classic. Gradually, a photo in black and white will always give us a mysterious impression because it is hard to know when it was produced.

Unlike the multiuse of cameras now, they were first applied in documentary. The use of cameras were tend to be more like photojournalism, it creates an image to tell a story of what happened instead of news in general term of photojournalism. Unsurprisingly, most of early photojournalism are about wars. I looked at the book of <Vietnam Inc.> by Phillip Jones Griffiths which was first publised in 1971. It was crucial in changing public attitudes in the United States and regarded as a changing point of photojournalism.

(Screenshot from: http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/warsgriffiths, accessed  on 21^st Nov 10)

Showing us the true horrors of the war as well as a study of Vietnamese rural life, the author creates a compelling argument against the de-humanizing power of the modern war machine and American imperialism. Rare and highly sought-after, the book has become one of the enduring classics of photo-journalism. The reason I referenced his work is for better understanding of black and white photos.

Going through the book is like making a nightmare. The photos, which Phillips took in black and white and try to make them in digistble way for us are shocking. Those sad photos hit every viewer’s both visiualy and emotionlly with its classic black and white. The apply of black and white instantly gives us a serious warning as if the subject is for surely something that needs us to concentrate and think about. We will assume colors used for joys and happiness, and dark colors to be used for a serious or sad scenes. In another word, the colors changed our moods.

I would like to conclude the book <Open Wound: Chechnya 1994 to 2003>  by Stanley Greene as well. A blitzkrieg was launched against the Chechens in 1994 after the collapse of Rusion communism in 1991, so devastating as to reduce Grozny, the capital, to a city of rubble and rats, the Dresden of the Caucasus. There followed the systematic rape and murder of the people–men, women and children–by the Spetznatz, the Russian special forces. Stanley Greece pictured the vision of hell in the eyes of the survivors.

(Screenshot from: http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4073, accessed on 20th Nov 10)

The above picture from Open wound shows a killing telephone wire and the city behind it in black and white. It instantly creates a dark and heavy environment, a serious scary astomosphere. Black and white is perfect choice because of the subjects of the photos. As Stanley spoke at the book:

“At first you see an open wound, infected and disastrous. It breaches chaos and death, it cries to reborn. Look closely at the open wound, and you can see the past, take a closer look and you’ll see the future.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(The Judgement; Goma, Zaire (July 1994), by Gilles Peress, Online Image from: http://bombsite.com/issues/59/articles/2033, accessed on 20th Nov 10)

The Silence by Gilles Peress is another book I found useful for this research. Its the account of the war in Rwanda of 1994 and Gilles Peress travelled there three times. Unlike the war photographer Robert Capa, Peress has not photographed soldiers being killed or caught up in combat. Peress has come in after the slaughter and has photographed the dead and damaged bodies of the Hutu people who were tortured by the Tutsi.

The images are breathtaking, they leave you unsettled and wondering about the inhumanity of the situation in Rwanda. He took jarring and intrepid photographs of genocide and a society in the process of self-destruction. It is not simply a book of news photographs. Peress’s images take us to the limits of life confronting us with the darkest sides of life. It is far more than evidence of the Rwandan tragedy but also a challenge to our conceptions about deceptive stability of civil society.

The above photo of his shows disturbing and cruel scene at Goma where people are murdered and killed. Dead bodies and skeletons spread across the land. When taking down such a tragedy, colors are not any more suitable for this lumbersome and depressing subject of deaths.

When seeing a black and white photo, sometimes we always associate it as way of expressing sadness, loneness, death and wars. Also because color photographs were rare, black and white photos were planted in the history of photography for decades and developed with a fame of classic.  The image tend to be timeliness with solemn narrative. I will compare color photos with black and white photos in the next entry.

Reference:  

THE Reader’s Digest Association Ltd.(1993).When, Where, Why and how it happened, ISBN 0-276-42105-1

Phillip Jones Griffiths(2001), Vietnam Inc., Phaidon Press Ltd, ISBN-13: 978-0714841526

Stanley Greene(2004), Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003, Trolley, ISBN-13: 978-0714841526

Gilles Peress(1995), The Silence, Scalo Publishers, ISBN-13: 978-1881616382

 http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/stilphotography.htm, Accessed on 20th Nov 10

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/06/09/beautiful-black-and-white-photography/ , accessed on 22nd Nov 10

RD11-Black and White

Black and white ( Q4 to listed questions)

When seeing the image of Emmet, Jessie & Virginia, it is not just only the nude children with the defiant look that caught my attention. The black and white old photo style actually made the charaters more vivid as if it shows their strong personality on the picture. Take a closer look, you feel like you can actually sense their powerful inner strengh. Yet it is nothing like a family photo collection, I would imagine a common family photo  with the children to be happy with big smiles.  

The black and white, however, instantly made the photo untouchable. It doesn’t resemble any familar scene around us. Children posing in adultlike gestures, and stares right into the camera and the viewers. In fact, if you look through Sally Mann’s photos, there is hardly any color photo found in Sally Mann’s series.  Most photos she had took were in black-and-white. ‘Holding Virginia’ is another example of her black and white photo from Immediate Family,  it made the photo powerful. Meanwhile, the photo seems to be taken from much older time, it is timeless and mysterious. Most importantly, it gives the viewer very strong impression.

(Holding Virginia, 1989, online image from: http://www.fotofeinkost.de/portraits-von-mannern-von-frauen/, accessed on 20^th Nov 10)

I think how she was inspired plays an important role in this. Again I went back to ealier research entry where I clearly kept down her background and early stage in photography. She took up photography at Putney, where, she claimed, her motive was to be alone in the darkroom with her boyfriend. She made her photographic debut at Putney, with an image of a nude classmate. Her interest in photography was promoted by her father. His 5×7 camera became the basis of her use of large format cameras today.

Her father, a physician, a civil rights supporter and, she lovingly says, an “oddball,” gave her a camera when she was 17 and told her the only subjects worthy of art were love, death and whimsy. (Sourced from: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Model_Family.html, accessed on 20th Nov 10)

It is very important to know that what the experience of photography in her early life does to her later work. As we may know from her series, no matter it is about her children or landscapes of south america, Sally Mann’s photos involve a great number of taboo subjects: nude, sad, and death. Things that her father had inspired her, and we can obviously see how she explored in her later work. She created a lot of photos that only surprised us but also kept challenging toward social taboo subjects.

Her black-and-white photographs are made with a large-format view camera, and thoughtfully and skillfully printed. She had carried on using her antique 8×10 view camera which had a history over a century. This very large camera, the kind that sits on a tripod, demands not only skill, but a slow, attentive, and contemplative eye. Using her large-format camera and embracing the uncertain nature of 19th-century photo processes, the resulting images are dark, romantic, saturated views of the South, which bring to mind a lost paradise, a forgotten memory, or the setting of a William Faulkner novel.

A video I found reveals how she operated with the giant ancient camera. It surely is not quite a tool that modern photographer will use when there are digital cameras and more advantaged technology. But Sally Mann chose to stick to this ancient machine, what gets her so addict to it?

When asked why she used the old equipment by Art 21, Sally Mann explained:  

“Well, you know I told you that none of my equipment has ever been any good, I certainly could go out and buy a good, tack-sharp lens that would take the perfect picture that’s in focus from end to end. But instead, I spend an awful lot of time at that antique mall looking around for these lenses with just the right amount of decrepitude. The glue has to be peeling off of the lens elements, it’s great if its mildewed and out of whack—a lens is made up of several different pieces of glass which are supposed to stay glued in the right relationship with each other—but my most prized lens has one of the pieces of glass askew, so when the light comes in it it’s refulgent. It just bounces all around and does this great sort of luminescent thing on the glass. You can tell a good ruined lens right from the get-go….they are the ones you find in the trash cans of old photo studios, in some ghost town in Iowa. I mean, that’s the kind of lens I’m looking for.”  (Sourced from: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mann/clip2.html, accessed on 20th Nov 10 )

Her continued use of antiquated techniques and the lengthy exposures they require have purposely afflicted these extreme close-ups with chanced flaws, hazy auras (even exhalations), and intense gazes. While different for their absence of context, the recent portraits nevertheless retain those elements that are so strikingly familiar from the most haunting of the Immediate Family pictures: the fierce sense of presence and its ensuing testimony to time’s passing that comes from Mann’s studied appreciation of those things held most dear.

I can explore further and find out why she was addicted to monochrome as if they have magic. It is true most people liked the impression of an old photo. Surely there are more about monochrome that can be looked into. This brings up further questions:  What is the origin of photography? Why is monochrome so popular? How is color applied in the work of art? Hopefully the rest of the research will bring an answer to why Sally Mann used single color for the photos. And I will expand the subject in future research.

Reference :

http://pphotographyb.blogspot.com/2010/10/deep-south-by-sally-mann.html , accessed on 20th Nov 10 ,

http://www.answers.com/topic/sally-mann , accessed on 20th Nov 10 ,                                                

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Model_Family.html#ixzz15Zickxst , accessed on 21^st Nov 10

SD-Week 5 + Week 6(12th Nov + 19th Nov)

Study Diary-Week 5 + Week 6(12th Nov + 19th Nov)

Following from my analysis of my research, I have found it hard to focus on specific material and resources that I can use. I had also tried to analyze the image but not quite critically. Because the subjects such as nudity in art and photography are so big, I have to select the most relevant topics to support my research.

Also, it is really important to make notes whilst reading long journals or texts. The lectures we had every Monday were really helpful. We were introduced to deeper investigation to the methods of research. The new knowledge inspired us to discover new aspects of the subject that we have not noticed before.

Last two weeks we also looked at narrative and intertextuality applied in media. I believe this is a very useful guide throughout the research. Because I can always look back again, and realized how Sally Mann may had be influenced and analyze the subject in a new direction.

Managing the time was also an important skill that I have learnt. With so many reading and limited time, I planed every step of research earlier and wrote down things that I need to do in a notebook. It is an efficient way of learning and helped me to focus more. Also I read briefly a few books that were in the hand-outs such as <Information is Beautiful,>(McCandless,D.2010, Collins) and <The Study Skills Handbook 3rd Ed.>(Cottrells.S.2008,Palgrave).

They are really helpful for the improvement of my academic writings. Also the narrative theories of Propp and Levi along with other semiotic language like connotations and denotations we learnt were helpful. Although I did not particularly refer in my research, I always consider them during my research.

RD10-Nudity in Photographs

Nudity in Photographs ( Q3 to listed questions)

As I have studied the nude picture from Immediate Family particularly. In order to anlyze the image of “Emmet,Jessie & Virginia”, I break down the interpreting of the images into different parts. Nudity is a popular and controversial subject in photographs. In this research entry, I would like to see nudity in photographs in a broader view and find out how Sally Mann may had be influenced by traditional art of nudity.

First of all, nudity is to be found in a multitude of media, from art, photography, film and on the internet. It had first occured in art centuries ago which always come with religious paintings. Later on it was applied in sculpture and more rencently in photography. Nudity in art has generally reflected social standards of asesthetics and morality of their time in painting.  All professionally produced works of art use stylized compositions to depict the nude body. 

Depictions of nudity refers to nudity in all the artistic disciplines including venacular and historical depictions. Since prehistoric time, representations of the nude body have been a major theme in art. The erotic aspect of nudity in the arts has been an important factor in its attraction, and has come to be associated with certain states and emotions, such as innocence, playfulness, vulnerability, etc. Pornography  does not necessarily involve a naked person, but it involves sexualized scenes, and usually it does not claim to have any artistic merit. ( sourced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudity, accessed on 18th Nov 10)

The subject reminded me the photography of a Chinese artist Liu Zheng. In 1994, he conceived of an ambitious photographic project called The Chinese, which occupied him for seven years and carried him throughout China. Inspired by the examples of August Sander and Diane Arbus, he has captured a people and country in a unique time of great flux, providing a startling vision of the deep-rooted historical forces and cultural attitudes that continue to shape China and its people. Liu seeks out moments in which archetypal Chinese characters are encountered in extreme and unexpected situations.

(The Web Cave / Four Beauties,1997, http://throughimpressedeyes.blogspot.com/2007/06/liu-zheng.html, accessed on 17th Nov 10)

Soon, Liu Zheng changed his style from the Realistic approach. In a way he distances himself from The Chinese producing a more choreographed and surrealistic body of work. The Web Cave(above) taken in 1997, for example, features three naked beauties wearing the traditional Peking opera headwear. The photo was nicely set and staged with four beautiful women in different poses. They wear accessories but no formal clothes at all, showing their mature bodies. I am stunned with the beautiful photo yet don’t actually know where to put my attentions.

It is actually arguable when artists choose to convey their ideas through naked bodies. Even the form of art doesn’t involve pornography, it is arguable what is actually playing the big part in that work: is it the naked body or the idea behind it? A work involving nudity always attract the viewers with the naked image of human bodies. Whatever it is that the artist trying to express, what comes to us first is a completely naked body.  I have also got a great book from the library which illustrates a great number of nude photographs  by top photographers across the world. What Anthony LaSala had concluded in his book <The world’s top photographers:Nudes> may be a good reference that I can use for this research:

The nude is one of the most revered and inspiring subjects in photography,and yet for some it remains one of the most controversial and challenging. A nude is not just study of the body without the camouflage of clothes, but also a flashpoint for debate about body image, cultre, sexuality, and very personal interpretations of beauty. For some photographers, the nude means elegant and sculptural studies of curves, light and shadows; for others, it means sexy, colorful, and sometimes voyeuristic photographs that entertain – or provoke.

Photographs of children are both the most common and the most controversial images of our times. Child nudity in photographs were often removed from museums and even seized by police. Last autumn, Tate Modern removed an image of the actress Brooke Shields, aged 10 and naked, was withdrawn from the exhibition Pop Life, after a visit from the Obscene Publications Unit. Spiritual America, by the artist Richard Prince, is a photo taken in 1982 of a photo taken in 1975, by the commercial photographer Garry Gross, of the young starlet made up like a grown woman. The police advised that it was “indecent” under the Protection of Children Act 1978, the gallery swiftly removed it. Other artists with similar works faced same challenge.

The turning point was in the 1990s, which saw a dramatic shift in attitudes, exemplified by the hysterical response to the work of the photographer Sally Mann. Mann produced a collection of intimate portraits of her three young children, Emmett, Jessie and Virginia, who were all under the age of 10. As I had found, most of her photos from that series contains nudity. The series made her name, but associated it forever after with controversy. She had actually begun photographing a series of naked girls from Virginia named <At Twelve>.

I am curious to know that, with so many other forms of photography, why did Sally Mann chose to do naked photos of her children. Does she just want to impress the crowds or somehow influenced by old art. We have all seen christian paintings which frequently have children as subjects. Some of them are young infants wih wings that resembled angels, the subjects are refer to noble and precious human beings. Most naked children appeared to be innocent, pure, cute and adorable.

Children as subjects had started from Italian Renaissance(end of 13^th Century to about 1600) when nude young boys were featured in many paintings, especially those with a Christian theme. Centuries later, many painters created images of nude children that carried no religious significance. Nowadays  child pornography laws often restrict depictions even more than the depicted acts (photographs of legal acts and even simple nudity may be illegal).     

[sourced from: http://globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Wikipedia:Depictions_of_nudity#Children_as_subjects, accessed on 18th Nov 10 ]

(Virginia at 6, 1989 , Online Image from : http://www.moreeuw.com/histoire-art/sally-mann.htm , accessed on 17th Nov 10 )

Some of Sally Mann’s photos that involve nudity are beautiful in a way. Virginia at 6(above), for example, features the child with hands over the head and standing next to the lake, actually sees the innocence of a child. Somehow it is a sign like religious ceremony, with a humble beautiful child praying. In case I got carried away too far with this subject, I may just stop here and carry on further research on diffrent topic.

Reference :

Sally Mann(1992),Immediate Family , Aperture, New York

LiuZheng(2004), The Chinese, ISBN-13: 978-3865210371 , Steidl/ICP

Anthony LaSala(2007), The world’s top photographers:Nudes, Rotovision, ISBN-13: 978-2940378272

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-or-abuse-a-lament-for-lost-innocence-2078397.html, accessed on 18th Nov 10

RD9-The last time Emmet modeled nude

Nude Emmet ( further to Q3 to listed question)

In last entry, I looked into naked photos from Immediate Family generally. The research gives me more idea of why Sally Mann chose to take the photos with her children naked. Now back to the original photo in which Emmett is the only one wears some clothes. Why is that?

In the series of Immediate Family , there are some photos that showed three children in nude. Quite interestedly, Emmett as the only boy of Sally Mann’s three children appeared to be less naked than his two sisters. Not just the photo of Emmett,Jessie and Virginia did Emmett appear with pants. In most occasions, Virginia and Jessie appeared to be wearing nothing and posed to the camera. While Emmet wears pants occasionally and simply just stared to the camera.

(Last time Emmet modeled nude, 1987 , Online Image from : http://www.cvm.qc.ca/mbenoit/mann/mann2.html, accessed on 12^th Nov 10) 

Emmet, the only male of the three children, is seen much less provocatively in the series than the girls are. Even in the almost sad titled ‘The last time Emme modeled nude'(above) , he still does not appear completely nude in the photo. In fact, we can only see him from the waist up, his  genitalia obscured by swirling water. Yet when it comes to Jessie or Virginia, Sally Mann exposed their naked bodies completly as if the children didn’t even realise that they are not wearing clothes.

The photo “The Perfect Tomato” below for example, shows young jessie naked and stands on her toes on a table. She is fearless and bravely showing her naked body even with Virginia and the other unidentified person in front of her. Although the photo is titled with “The Perfect Tomato”, one tends to pay more attention to the naked Jessie because the rest of the photo apart from nude Jessie is in dark shadow.

(The Perfect Tomato,1990,http://rachelhulin.com/blog/wp-content/images/assets_c/2008/09/gpc_work_large_928-thumb-573×454.jpg, accessed on 11th Nov 10)

This also brings up another topic of focusing. In the book of < The Nature of Photographs> by Stephen Shore. He pointed out that amidst the infinity of potential images, both real and imagined, the photographer has four – and only four – formal tools for defining a picture’s content and organization: vantage point, frame, focus and time. The set up and effect of <The Perfect Tomato> showed focus of Jessie Mann more than anything else as if Sally Mann took the photo in a purpose.

In the photo of Sunday Funnies(below), again, focused on a more mature body of Jessie Mann. In this photo, Emmet again wears a short and simply is just looking at the camera, almost resentful in the way that he is being depicted.. Although Jessie and Virginia are both naked in bed, Virginia is kind of in the shadow and bit blur. It immediately drew the attentions of viewers to naked Jessie.

(Sunday Funnies, 1991, http://phillipsdepury.com/auctions/lot-detail.aspx?sn=UK040108&search=&p=3&order=&lotnum=235 , accessed on 12^th Nov 10) 

I couldn’t help but wondering how Emmet coped and how he grew up with his two sisters naked bodies. It is very unusual as growing up in a rural country myself, I can understand children going naked at young age. We girls at 4 or 5 years old would only wear pants, but not nothing when you reach this certain ages. Even boys would seldom appear naked at home as they grow up. Is it because the boy himself is quite annoyed  and shy to participate in naked or simply because Sally Mann does not want to reveal a naked body of a male. The following source also explains:

The image’s meaning changes when the artist is a woman, and the subject is male. It has the tendency to become distinctly more sexual, and in turn, comes more under fire than the female/female exchange. sourced from: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/11/theory-sally-manns-immediate-family.html, accessed on 12^th Nov 10       

On the other hand, the photo above shows the modestly and uncertainty that Emmet felt about his modeling. In an interview that an older Jessie Mann gave to Aperture magazine, she tells how Emmet is dealing with the pressure that he is put under from the photographs of his youth.

“Emmet is completely daunted by it. He doesn’t know what he wants, so he backs away from the whole thing” (Jessie Mann).

This feeling is easily discernible in the images of him, and can explain why he appears nude much less than the girls. Being the only boy and sensitive, Emmet was less involved than his sisters in the work of Sally Mann. It also opens up an entire line of questioning the gender issue when dealing with Mann’s work. Some would question why Emmet as the only male is placed in the middle of the photo. This could involve a further contention over feminism.

From my point of view, the stage is simply for a better frame. Because there are two girls and one boy, a photographer will instantly place a boy in the middle. Similarly, I assume a girl placed in the middle if there are two boys and a girl. One other possiblity is because the boy is the tallest among the three children, and by placing him in the middle makes a perfect angle for the composition of a picture.

The nudity in photography can be expanded as it is such a big subject. Nudity in art is never strange to us which dates back centuries ago. Is Sally Mann influenced by the traditional art? I will find out more in the next entry.

Reference :

Shore, S. (2010), The Nature of Photographs: A Primer, Phaidon Press 

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Model_Family.html, accessed on 13^th Nov 10       

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=Virginia%20at%20Four&page=&f=Title&object=2001.197, accessed on 13^th Nov 10

RD8-Nude Children

Nude Children ( Q3 to listed questions)

In the picture of Emmet, Jessie & Virginia, the children appeared to be wearing nothing apart from Emmett who is wearing a pants. It appeared that Emmett is also wearing lucky chains and Jessie seems to be wearing a ring. Virginia, however, is not wearing anything.

It occurred that there are more photos in the series of Immediate Family in which the children are seen nude. Some even argued that the book had made Sally Mann famous for the wrong reasons. To most people, Sally Mann is the photographer who took pictures of her children naked. In this entry, I will  go through a few of Sally Mann’s photos and find out why the children are naked.

In some of her photos, the children wear no clothes at all and modeled in front of the camera. The ways they look and behave are very unusual as to any other family photo collections. The belowing photo featured Jessie at five with naked pose wearing necklace. The title is shocking in that this girl looks as if she could be twelve or thirteen, modeling for a fashion magazine. The image plays off of the concept of age, and what it truly means to be a child. With humble little Virginia by the side, Jessie posed and looked much older than her real age. She flaunts for the camera with a centerfold gaze.

Yet some would argue this photo as child porngraphy. Jessie, who was only a five years old, played a sextual look in the photo. There are also other photos that have naked scene, and they have also received similar critical reviews.

 

(Jessie at Five, 1987, Online Image From : http://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/28659 , accessed on 08th Nov 10) 

Other photos also showed her naked children in different poses. These photos of Mann’s own children are by far her most riveting. She captures her young naked son wading in a creek (wet hair, wet lips, sultry eyes)–all the makings of soft-core child porn.Critics exaggerated the intimacy of the photos at the expense of their artfulness; and because the American religious right accused her of pornography when her camera was capturing her version of beauty.

In response to child pornography, Sally Mann defended that

“Out of the 65 photos in the book, only 13 show the children naked. There was no internet in those days. I’d never seen child pornography. It wasn’t in people’s consciousness. Showing my children’s bodies didn’t seem unusual to me. Exploitation was the farthest thing from my mind.”

Sally Mann argued that what she take was nothing to do with child abuse or pornography. On one occasion, she had made explanation for a photo which sees her children naked by the lake. Sally Mann defended that there were hardly anyone around the lake for a long distance, it is not unusual in that environment for children to go naked and enjoy swimming. Because of the way she brought up and the custom in Virginia, things may be seen in different ways.

They are simply the photos a mother takes down of what happened in a daily life of a child. She mentioned about her childhood, being the only girl of three children to a doctor and bookshop owner, she had enjoyed a wild life in the rural Virginia area. There she was brought up in a naked way when she was a child and close to nature. The experience of her feral childhood may have just influenced her work when she took photos of her naked children. To her, these are no unusual scenes but true to a mother’s eyes.

“My parents were eccentric, and when I had my own children, I didn’t see any point in making them wear bathing suits when we swam in the river,” Mann says. “There was no one within five miles of us.”, sourced from : http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Model_Family.html, accessed on 08th Nov 10

And she brought up her children in the traditional Virginia way, undress the children. Whatever comes out from the camera does not involve child porngraphy from her point of view. Jessie at Five wearing necklace with her look is just a young kid going through her own understanding of womenhood. Most of other photos are demonstrating the same idea, in the precious entry about photo staging, I also come across same kind of issue: that although Sally Mann composed the photos, yet she allowed the children to have their own voice and express their own feeling. That is why most photos are powerful and we can see the children’s personalities through their eyes.

Sally Mann created this unusual series of work may suggest another way of narrative of her children growing up and tried to discover themselves and their sexuality.  These children exist in the innocent world that Mann had tried to show. To intepret these controversial photos in a netural position, I found a interesting paragraph as below:

“What adults understand as the sexuality of children is always defined by the adult world; in this view, childhood is not fixed but culturally produced” (Edge, Baylis). ‘Immediate Family’ needs to be considered within the cultural and social climate that produced it; an America which was busy legislating to prevent Federal Funds being used to promote, disseminate or produce material depicting sadomasochism, homoeroticism, the exploitation of children or individuals engaged in sex acts”(Fletcher). Pedophilia is a very real fear in today’s world. When images of this type, no matter how innocent, are displayed to the public, it is always possible that they will be deemed inappropriate. Child molestation is a frighteningly real issue that most would choose to ignore, and stamp out anything that even slightly resembles it.” (sourced from:http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/11/theory-sally-manns-immediate-family.html , accessed on 09th Nov 10)

It is a good point in a way, defending from the children’s side. To know both pros and critical review of the photo surely help me to understand the photo more. If “Immediate Family” is all about showing what really makes up a child and a childhood, it may just happen to be created in its own way. And we can not simply judge it from adults’ views, instead we will need to try to understand the culture and customs behind the scene.

(The Wet Bed, 1987, Online Image From : http://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/8485, accessed on 09th Nov 10)

For Mann, a scene of her naked child wetting the bed is also quite usual. The Wet Bed, above, shows nude Virginia who is seen sleeping, sprawled out on the mattress without a care, her quilt kicked off to her.Yet showing the naked and private parts of her children to the public does somehow made people feel uncomfortable. “The Wet Bed” for example, is an image that most mothers’ see when they have toddlers and should stay in private, but Mann chose to bring her private world to the forefront of the public.

Now these naked photos involve more than just child porngraphy, privacy but also moral issues. Selling her chidren’s naked photo for money is immoral and it had gone beyond the line. As Pat Robertson who was making a documentary on Mann said:

  “Selling photographs of children naked for profit is immoral.” And you know, I think it can be. It’s a slippery slope, and I think conditions get most icy and dangerous when large amounts of money are involved. (Sourced from: http://blog.photoshelter.com/2008/04/sally-mann-jessie-at-12.html, accessed on 07th Nov 10)

At the meantime, the series had more pictures of Sally Mann’s two daughters naked in different poses. But in most occasions, her eldest son Emmet appeared to be wearing shorts with the angry look.  Why is that? And what else is influencing Sally Mann to take nude photos?  I will find out more in the future research.

References : 

Sally Mann(1992),Immediate Family , Aperture, New York

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 110(2002), Michael Auping, London,ISBN-10: 0929865189

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/may/29/sally-mann-naked-dead , accessed on 08th Nov 10

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/11/theory-sally-manns-immediate-family.html , accessed on 09th Nov 10

RD7-Art and life

Art and Life(Further to Q2 of Listed questions)

In precious entry, I looked at the topic of photo staging. After looking through several different artist’s work, I had decided to find out more behind the setting up of Sally Mann’s photos. The series include not only fantasies and ficions, there are also some real life photos.

Mann had created a place that looked like Eden or lost paradise with staged photos. Naked children who are enjoyed freedom in the rural and beautiful Virginia.  But then there are also photos that cast upon it the subdued and shifting light of nostalgia, sexuality and death. Some of the images from Immediate Family showed her children in states of confused, rebelling and pains. Some of the photos featured the children unusual state of childhood: sad, sick, bloodied, angry and even naked.

Both two photos belowing (Black Eye and Damaged Child) shows Virginia who had swallon eye and infections. This is from real life scene yet not very often seen in a family photo album. Criticisms often doubted whether the children have an enjoyable childhood. Her role as mother had been frequently questioned by others. People doubt whether or not the poor children can grow up just as other young children.

                                                                                                                 

(Black Eye, 1991, Online Image from : http://popartmachine.com/item/pop_art/CMA-CMA_.1995.198/SALLY-MANN-BLACK-EYE-1991, Accessed on 04th Nov 10)

                                                

(Damaged Child, 1984,  Online Image from : http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424933387/141091/damaged-child.html , accessed on 04th Nov 10) 

To them, the series showed people the sensuous and sometimes disturbing side of childhood. The photos showed child pornography and the mark of an irresponsible mother. The controversy that  <Immediate Family> stirred up is a direct reflection of the times in which it was produced, and says more about the adult viewer than of the child subject.

Sally Mann herself considered that the photographs such as wet bed and bloody nose are very common scene in a child’s life. Because children are fragile, Mann recoded these true pictures with her camera. She tried to freeze their childhood before her children grow up. To her, they were little more than tender, maternal photographs of her children. She considered the photographs to be “ natural through the eyes of a mother”.

The truth is being a mother as well as artist had made it hard to balance both. As she quoted one time herself:

“I struggle with enormous discrepancies: between the reality of motherhood and the image of it, between my love for my home and the need to travel, between the varied and seductive paths of the heart. The lessons of impermanance, the occasional despair and the muse, so tenuously moored, all visit their needs upon me and I dig deeply for the spiritual utilities that restore me: my love for the place, for the one man left, for my children and friends and the great green pulse of spring. -Sally Mann- Still Time catalogue Alleghany Highlands Arts and Crafts Center, 1988”    (Sourced from : http://www.photoquotes.com/showquotes.aspx?id=431&name=Mann,Sally#1432, accessed on 30th Oct 10)

First of all, Sally Mann is an artist so she sees her children in both parental and artistic way. There are conflicts when she made decision between art and life. The two can’t be mixed up yet somehow connected. She takes photos of her child who imitates adult or the intense expressions in their eyes, revealing strength of character. All these can make the photos uncomfortable for some otheres when coming to view them. Did she knew this coming before making decision to take those photos? 

I had come across the artwork by the pioneering contemporary Chinese artist Ai WeiWei in Tate Morden museum. Ai WeiWei had produced a mass of porcelain sunflower seeds that covers the turbine hall in the museum. The work is done by 1600 people by hand painting. Ai mentioned in the video that “ Art is a tool to set up new questions”. The idea of sunflower seeds also conveys that what you see is not what you see.

                                                               

(Screenshot from : http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unileverseries2010/room3.shtm , accessed on 03rd Nov 10)

I think he actually come up with something interesting as I instantly connect up with Sally Mann’s work. There is some similarity in how both artists work. Sally Mann also showed people a new way of seeing children. That is innovative and opens a door to a new world. Unlike others who may only shows children in happy childhood, she decided to challenge this by demonstrating unpleasant photos: naked, rebelling, adult look etc.

Sally Mann had chosen to explore the concept of childhood and “growing up” using a variety of the sensual, reality and the fantastic; all through a maternal eye.

“There are so many levels to childhood that we as a society ignore, or don’t accept. Rather than just saying it, she (Sally Mann) was able to capture it with photographs. It’s easy to discount these things unless you can really see them in the kids’ eyes, or see it in their actions” (Jessie Mann).

And she used the camera as her tool of art, setting up new questions which others didn’t think about. What we see is more than what we see, we have to look through the photo and try to understand the deeper meaning behind it.

When considering her role as mother, it can not really be judged by what we see. As mentioned in precious research entry, we do not know the true stroy behind the scene. But I do hope to find out more about this through her work. As the next question will be concetrating on photos of her naked children and hopefully I can find out more.

References:

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/11/theory-sally-manns-immediate-family.html , accessed on 03rd Nov 10

http://mocoloco.com/art/archives/003540.php   , accessed on 03rd Nov 10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Mann  , accessed on 03rd Nov 10

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Model_Family.html , accessed on 04th Nov 10

SD-Week 3 + Week 4 ( 29th Oct + 05th Nov 10)

Study Diary–Week 3 + Week 4 ( 29th Oct + 05th Nov 10)

Two more weeks into the research, I have become more enthusiastic and confident in finding the right resources. While a few weeks ago, I was kind of lost in the large amount of information out there. It is driving crazy as I didn’t know which parts are useful and which are not. 

The lecture in academic writing had been really helpful to me. As now I have to learn how to manage my points and evidence in the right way. We had looked into aspects of techniques needed for academic writing which is important for the next step of my research. We were also taught about how to write analytically by looking at samples from other’s essay.

The week after we had a discussion within small groups regarding the subject we had chosen. This was very interesting because I got to know more people from other groups and their ideas. It is very educated as they may come up with different ideas which others may not have thought about.

RD6-Staged Photos

Staged Photos, (Further to Q2 of Listed questions)

In terms of why Sally Mann set the children up (or at least she told the children to express their emotion in that specific way) with the specific look, I think the whole idea is to get the maximum attention from the viewers. People can stare at the children as long as they wish, and at the meantime they feel like being watched by the three youngsters. 

This brought up subject of photo staging. It is a familiar topic for anyone who had come across with photography. Not just photographers, even the models will experience certain set for the shoot. I remember when I was a kid and taking family photos, the photographer will always ask us where to stand and how to look. They would simply want to catch the best shot of us and told us when to smile. These scenes are very common ever since photography was born. Unlike photo journalism, other photos are often staged accordingly to certain sets by photographers.

A photo I found from Photographic Credits by Robert Doisneau may be a good example of staged photo. The belowing photo ” Kiss  by the Hotel de Ville” resembled Alfred Eisenstaedt’s image of a sailor kissing a girl in a white dress in Times Square on VJ day in second world war. Robert reminded us the beautiful image by setting up a similar photo stage. A lot of other photographers or artists also stage photo shots in order to convey their idea on these carefully set-up scenes.

(Kiss by the Hotel de Ville, Paris, 1950 by Robert Doisneau, online image from : http://blogs.photopreneur.com/worlds-most-infamous-staged-photos, accessed on 30th Oct 10)

(V-J Day Kiss, Times Square, 1945, by  Alfred Eisenstaedt, online image from: http://photos.codlib.com/2007/07/26/the-v-j-day-kiss-times-square/, accessed on 30th Oct 10)

Sally Mann, unsurprisingly as an photographer herself, set up the stages in rural countryside. She used her camera to capture the life of her children, naked and in some uncomfortable states. At the beginning of her introduction to her 1992 Aperture book <Immediate Family>, she wrote that:

“The place is important; the time is summer. It’s any summer, but the place is home and people here are my family.”

Yet the photo of Emmett, Jessie and Virginia didn’t turn out to look as comfortable as a family photo at all. It appeared to be more like a commercial shoot, she knows exactly how to stage and what to put on the photo to attract the attention. Every single detail is actually set up by her with her children who she would refer to be enthusiastic in participating. 

Some other photographers from the series of Immediate Family featured photos that contained uncomfortable look of Emmett, Jessie and Virginia. In the photo we are analyzing, Jessie, Virginia and Emmett stare right into the lens. They look like children but appear to pose in an adult way. Then there are photos including them with a cigarette, or wearing pearls and little else, or dancing with no clothes on. One is titled, almost angrily: The Last Time Emmett Modeled Nude.

These disturbing photos are among the few challenge conventional ideals of childhood. But again it is what the unordinary sense that caught the viewers’ eyes. Sally Mann has set up a photo that all can see the future adult in the child, wavering between youth and maturity.(Sourced from: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-or-abuse-a-lament-for-lost-innocence-2078397.html, accessed on 31st Oct 10)

                                         

 (Candy Cigarette , 1989 ,Image from : http://elynunezblog.com/?p=139 , accessed on 31st Oct 10)

Candy cigarette taken in 1989, shows young Jessie holding a cigarette in her hand. She posed like a young adult. There are other similar photos which are conflicting to what Sally Mann wrote in her book. Instead of nice warm family photos that are usually seen, she produced controversial series of photos that are somehow unpleasant. The fact that the children are asked to perform and act like someone else in front of the camera of their mother made the photos unnatural.

This reminded me of work by a famous Chinese photographer Jiao Bo. In the book of <My Mom and Dad>, he chose more than 100 photos among tens of thousands of photos he took for his parents over last 30 years. Jiao Bo’s parents had been living together for over 70 years. He started taking photos of his own parents from 1974 and lasted for 30 years.

In total, he took more than 12,000 photos and recorded his parents’ life for more than 600 hours. The primary purpose is to freeze the memory of his parents who are getting old and the series had moved thousands of people. Being warm and real, this series of domestic life of two old people had won Jiao Bo large amounts of awards. But more importantly, the photos had managed to tell story of the couple who may just be the stereotypes of parents to others.

Almost every single photo he took was usual scene of his parents in life. The whole series was classified as documentary photos and the photos are not particularly staged.They did not set up particular look to the camera and were kind of relaxed and natural in the set. Jiao Bo’s photos showed people a couple of real life, parents of a normal people in a documentary way. Yet photos are so beautiful in a way that made everybody who sees it see the real person behind them. More importantly, they capture the real picture of the person and can even reflect the souls.

The photo below shows Jiao Bo’s mother who help to scratch of her partner’s back. The photo is very real and seems like they didn’t even notice a camera behind them. It occurs to me again that both Sally Mann and Jiao Bo had same purpose of captureing the beauty and love of their family members, yet the photos comes out so different.

(Online Image : http://sh.villachina.com/2008-11-19/2231817.htm, Accessed on 31st Oct 10)  

I would like to include a similar famous work by Larry Sulton  Larry Sulton. He took same kind of series of his family some years ealier than Sally Mann. Larry Sultan photographed his father and family over a ten year period spanning the 70s and 80s as part of an elaborate project that included his parents own photos, home movies and statements.

(DAD ON BED, 1985, LARRY SULTON ,Online Image from : http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/sultan.shtml, accessed on 31st Oct 10)

The above photo “Dad on the bed” is very interesting one to look into. The photo features Larry’s father sitting on the bed, something between smile and sad. In fact, it is photo set up by Larry Sulton who told his father to stop smiling. To explain this, he suggested in the extract from <We are Family> that

“Photography is instrumental in creating family not only as a memento, a souvenir, but also a kind of mythology.” Some artists have confronted the role photography itself has played in creating and complicating our sense of domestic life.”

As Barthes analyzed in the book of Mythologies(1993),the unifying theme is the idea of “myth” – basically, a type of signification which projects an additional meaning onto an existing concept so as to make it carry a second, ideological meaning. To achieve that, Larry set and create his version of the Sultan family. While his father Irvin struggled with the role given, told to stop smiling. I wonder what the model within that picture think, will he be able to recognize himself in that photo taken by his son? What the photo tells is a man without a smile, yet in fact he was probably a happy man.

Although Sally Mann’s photos from <Immediate Family> also took pictures of real life, but the dark side of the children’s childhood. Signs of upset, injury and danger abound –such as a bloody nose, a west bed. There are also photos that are set up and the viewer sees future adulthood in that child. Sally Mann thinks that

“Photographs open doors into the past but they also allow a look into the future.”(Sally Mann, Photography Speaks II : 76 Photographers on Their Art by Brooks Johnson (Editor), Chrysler Museum)(Sourced from: http://www.photoquotes.com/showquotes.aspx?id=431&name=Mann,Sally#1432, assessed on 31st Oct 10)

Actually I can not yet judge whether or not the setting up of Sally Mann’s photo is for good or bad. But through analyzing and looking through similar work by other artists, I definitely have better understanding to her work. In the next entry, I will explore this subject and find out more.

References :

Sally Mann(1992),Immediate Family , Aperture, New York  

Robert Doisneau(1991), Photographic Credits, Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-41077-1

Jiao Bo(2005),My Mom and Dad , HuaYi Publication Company, I S B N：9787801426970

Barthes.R.(1993), Mythologies, Vintage

RD5-Emmett,Jessie &Virginia

Emmett,Jessie&Virginia(Further to Q2 of Listed questions)

I had briefly looked into Emmett, Jessie and Virginia’s profiles as well as the story of the photo. And a few more questions arise to me:

1,What influence may this experience in participating in Sally Mann’s photo have on three youngsters?  

2,Why  did Sally Mann set up that kind of look?

Of course this image will also involve the gender issue if talking about photo staging. Emmett being at the middle of the photo with two girls next, he is also the only one who seems to be wearing underpants. Also he wears lucky chains as accessary, this could all be included in gender issue. But because of my future research that involves nudity of three children which may also be analyzing gender issue, I will leave this question to later.

As we may have all learnt form Sally Mann’s Immediate Family, Sally Mann had introduced her children to her world of art from a very young age. Because of the attrations to Sally Mann’s controversial photos, Emmett, Jessie and Virgina had been under spotlight at very young age since Sally Mann’s photographer went well-known. They all have become used to the large amount of attentions from a room of strangers. The NewYork time had described how the children acted at the gallery.

“Motoring among the spectators like honorees at a testimonial dinner, Mann’s three children — Emmett, 12, Jessie, 10, and Virginia, 7 — looked completely at ease with the crowd’s prying adoration. While her mother and father conversed with friends and admirers, Jessie orbited the four rooms in her red dress, fielding questions from strangers eager to know more about her parents. Beneath a portrait of himself in the water, Emmett shrugged off the stares and expressed a typical teen-age frame of mind. “These shoes cost $70,” he boasted about his opening night footwear. All three seemed unconcerned by the fact that on the surrounding white walls they could be examined, up close, totally nude.”

(Sourced from : http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/27/magazine/the-disturbing-photography-of-sally-mann.html, Accessed on 26th Oct 10)

The success of Sally Mann’s “ordinary family photos” had somehow changed the life of the children. Sally Mann, as the photographer and also the mother of three, had definitely influenced their childhood. Posing for the cameras, the children are experiencing a childhood that is different to any other families. Sally Mann had chose to get them involve in her art by sacrificing the children’s ordinary childhood.

They are no longer be able to go back to normal life that normal kids have. Suddenly they are known to tens of thousands of people around the world. All these fame gained through an unusual way by the later famous photographer of the American – their mother. 

Jessie had once mentioned what the fames bring to them at an interview. She herself was quite into art and was used to the spotlight. She later become actively involved in art herself. Yet Emmett and Virginia had totally different reactions. The former was lost and did not know where he was. While the latter one just wanted to be back to normal life. Virginia did walk away and went on to do law school.

“Each of us is dealing with that pressure in a very different way. Emmett is completely daunted by it. He doesn’t know what he wants, so he backs away from the whole thing: he’s sometimes afraid to have any goals or any aspirations, doesn’t want to get too involved or too intense. Mom is a very driven person, and really has little understanding of people who aren’t that driven. Emmett has to sort it out on his own. He and I are very close. Kind of like Franny and Zooey, we keep each other together. We help each other out. Nobody can understand what I’m going through like he can.

Ginna, on the other hand, was a lot younger than Emmett and me when those pictures were taken, so I think the experience for her was completely different. Her attitude right now is: ‘I want to have a normal life; I want to forget about this; I don’t want to have to use it to my advantage; I don’t want to either be living up to something or living down to something; I’m just going to be living.’ She’s trying to go the middle road more than I’ve ever seen, trying to be ‘normal.’ And coming out of our family, that takes a lot of effort. . . . Ginna wants to be like everybody else, and these pictures have made that difficult. One of the things that Mom did best was always allow us to sort of go for it, to find out who we were, no matter what the cost. When I wanted to shave my head, she was there with the clippers. ‘Do it. Have fun. Explore yourself. I’m not not going to tell you who you are.’ For me, that was a really great freedom, but I don’t think Ginna responded to the whole situation like that.”
(Source : http://members.cox.net/logophore/issues/cult/bank_cult_mann.html, accessed on 26th Oct 10)

On the other hand, taking part in Sally Mann’s photographer did give them something else. In one of the other interviews with Art 21, both Emmett and Jessie spoke of the positive change they have from Sally Mann. The unique experience had provide approach to art by participating in the artwork themselves. Jessie, who had also become actively in art after growing up, may had proved Sally Mann’s efforts. The children grew up in the world of Sally Mann who had enjoyed a totally unusual form of expressing her art through naked children, death etc. Is it good or bad for the children?  

“ART:21:   Has taking part in your mother’s photography changed your life in any way?

Emmett:   I feel like being in those pictures definitely has changed me as a person. Definitely.

Jessie:   Because you have to get a sense of yourself, not only how you exist and your immediate surroundings, and how you exist in your family which is enough of a struggle for most of society, but we also have to think about how we figure in all of America and all of the art scene because so many people have seen us that you…we have a persona that’s beyond us, that we don’t have control…

Emmett:   I mean anyone who’s as driven as Sally Mann is, is going to be an intense mother and she’s like…she’s an incredible mom.“

(Sourced from : http://talentdevelop.com/motherhood2.html, accessed on 26th Oct 10)

This does bring up another question: are the children involved in the art voluntarily or simply forced to be in the scene? A critical article “Nole Me Tangere” by Noelle Oxehandle also mentioned about similar question. She had expressed her worries about the young children whose posture  in front of the camera made others uncomfortable. She remembered how vulnable her child used to be and what unusual way of putting children in the position of those postures. Noelle even brought up the word of torture and execution in the article questioning the photos as dangerous to the children.

Which is really the more dangerous vision of children: the one that presents them to us, scrubbed
and cute among flowers, as decor, accessory? Or the one that acknowledges the edges we walk on? As
Jung said: it’s what remains unconscious that returns as fate.

 (sourced from: http://www.nerve.com/content/nole-me-tangere-the-family-photographs-of-sally-mann, accessed on 28th Oct 10) 

 While question remained is whether or not the children were simply driven by her own desire for art. Of course many people would concentrate on the discussion of the role that Sally Mann plays as a mother. This may also be important and included in my future research. But the fact that one can’t deny is they are somehow influenced by their mother. It is understood that she believed her children all volunteered to be involved in the process of making art. But here I would prefer to look at particularly the impact Sally Mann has on the children as a role of photographer. Because photographing is what she seemed to be spending more time on rather than anything else in her early life as a mother.

“And any parent knows that you can’t force a child to make art; they have to cooperate, they have to want to be part of the process. When we made these pictures, the kids knew exactly what to do to make an image work: how to look, how to project degrees of intensity or defiance or plaintive, woebegone, Dorthea-Lange dejection. I didn’t pry these pictures from them — they gave them to me. Remember that and the images take on a wholly different meaning — no deep psychological manipulations or machinations, just the straight-forward, everyday telling of a story.”[Sourced from : http://www.cvm.qc.ca/mbenoit/psocial/main.html, Accessed on 02 Nov 10] 

Sally Mann would defend herself from the controversies that the photos were collaboration with her children. But I think when she agreed to let these photos go public, she had somehow gave up her role as mother or the motherhood was hiden behind the photos which we don’t get to see. What we see is simply the photos and hence hard to judge things without knowing the truth of their family life. 

Others may argue the role Sally Mann played as a mother. Because of photos she took for the children, there are always controversies about whether or not she is a good mother. That could be necessary for further research. Yet good or bad for the children, they all started with her desire for producing something impressive. The photos still reflects a mother’s loving regard. As Jessie Mann spoke once that

” This was her way of showing her love for them, through the capturing of their lives on film. She has a hard time letting us know how much she loves us. But I’ve also realized that each one of those photographs was her way of capturing, if not in a hug or a kiss or a comment, how much she cared about us” , sourced from: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/11/theory-sally-manns-immediate-family.html, accessed on 04th Nov 10

Every coin has two sides, how much the children were influenced is something complicated if we do not know the story behind the scene. We only see the children from the photos yet we do not know how their live their lives. So I will probably end this topic for now, but instead will start on the setting up of her photos.

SD-Week 2 (22nd Oct 10)

Study Diary-Week 2 (22nd Oct 10)

I had become more interested in this research project as I had gained a lot through the process. For the past few days, I was only concentrating on the internet which kind of narrow my view so I started looking for books that are relevant from the library as they may become important secondary resources.

And I gradually learnt that even a simple thing we took for granted can reveal a lot of information to us by analyzing it.  I picked up things I had learnt alongside with my further research. Instead of learning a new subject or theory without knowing where to start, this research had introduced me a new way of study. I was introduced to wider knowledge world driven by my curiosity.  

Patience and observation, I realized, are two particular important elements for a success research. I have to read a lot of articles in order to understand even very basic phenomena.

RD4-Emmett,Jessie and Virginia

Emmett, Jessie and Virginia (Q2 to listed questions)

The children on the photo are no ordinary models, they were not picked randomly. In fact, they are actually the children of the photographer herself. It is The photo was also named after their individual names. This may appear to be very obvious question to many who had heard about Sally Mann. She gained her fame firstly with the photographs she took for these children.

But the reason I brought up the question is more than the question itself. I want to find out more than just who the children of Sally Mann’s are, but more profoundly, what had they become after the participant in the image. In this image, the relationship between the photographer and models can also be analyzed itself. It may involve a discussion of whether or not it influenced the whole context of the image from the setting to the idea the image carries.

I think this can  another interesting topic. Yet currently I would like to go through the profile of each three children. Knowing what had become of them are important for the future research in relating to my queries.

Emmett Mann (the boy as eldest child) was born in 1979 and later joined the Peace Corps for a time.

Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government. The mission of the organization includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States understand U.S. culture, and helping Americans understand the cultures of other countries. Generally, the work is related to social and economic development. Each program participant, (aka Peace Corps Volunteer), is an American citizen with a college degree who works abroad for a period of twenty four months after three months of training. Volunteers work with governments, schools, non-profit organizations, non-government organizations, and entrepreneurs in education, health, business, information technology, agriculture, and the environment. [sourced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Corps, accessed on 17 Oct 10]

Jessie Mann (the girl on the right) who I presumed to be older girl was born in 1981.

She had also become a writer, photographer, model and artist. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries such as Zone Chelsea (New York), The Reynolds Gallery (Richmond, VA), as well as Nelson Fine Arts (Lexington, VA), and XYZ (Blacksburg, VA). Her writing has appeared in Aperture and Shots magazine. Jessie is also one of the best known models and muses of our generation, known for her collaboration with her mother, the photographer Sally Mann, and photographer Len Prince. (The collaboration with Prince is represented by Danziger Projects.) Jessie is a graduate of Washington & Lee University.[sourced from: http://wayneyang.wordpress.com/2007/04/26/jessie-mann-interview/, accessed on 18 Oct 10]

And the youngest child (the girl on the left) is Virginia Mann, she was born in 1985 and later attended a law school. Although their future career or personal life does not necessary have any director contact with the photo that was taken in their early age. Yet they are important as further questions may arise such as what the influences that Sally Mann has on them. In order to expand the research, I have to find out more about the story of the photo.

 

[online image : http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51C91HPEQ4L._SS500_.jpg , accessed on 20 Oct 10]

“Emmett, Jessie and Virginia” was actually one of the most recognizable photos among Sally Mann’s work. It has also occurred on the front page of which was also the third collection of Sally Mann’s. For anyone who had come across Sally Mann, this photo of her children could probably be used as the most representative photo of her controversial nude photo sereis, not too naked, yet less arrogant and erotic. This photo also conclude all other controversial disccusions such as : the role of Sally Mann as mother, child porngrophy, gendre issue etc.

Mann began photographing her three children—Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia—every summer from the time they were infants in the mid-1980s. The book consists of 65 black and white photographs of her three children, all under the age of 10. The book titled as Immediate Family (1985-92) captures the children’s childhood in the rural countryside of Virginia.  Yet distinguishly, the children appeared in nude in most occasions. The photos featured them in different moods: angry, happy, playful, beautiful or messy. Many of the pictures were taken at the family’s remote summer cabin along the river, where the children played and swam in the nude.

In certain cases, the photographs have a recognizable quality: “Some are fictions, some are fantastic, but most are of ordinary things every parent has seen—a wet bed, a bloody nose, candy cigarettes.”Many explore typical childhood themes (skinny dipping, reading the funnies, dressing up, vamping, napping, playing board games) but others touch on darker themes such as insecurity, loneliness, injury, sexuality and death.

Whatever that was out there, the success of the book had no doubt made Sally Mann’s name across the world. The NY Times said, “Probably no photographer in history has enjoyed such a burst of success in the art world.” The book has earned a variety of good reviews through the time.

(Screenshot from http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0893815233/ref=dp_proddesc_0/190-7298674-2840532?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books, accessed on 20 Oct 10)

At the meantime, the controversy on its release was also intense, including accusations of child pornography. Mann’s pictures are nothing like typical family photos, it is beautiful in its own way. As she had mentioned that the work was collaboration with her children of ordinary moments like others. Despite all the dilikes or objections of her photos, she defended that :

“We are spinning a story of what it is to grow up. It is a complicated story and sometimes we try to take on the grand themes: anger, love, death, sensuality, and beauty. But we tell it all without fear and without shame.”-Sally Mann,

sourced from : http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/story/mann.html, accessed on 20 Oct 10 

Knowing the background and profile of the children are very important for the next stage of my research. I will be looking at further into the subjects of the image, ie.Mann’s children, in the next research entry.

Study Diary-Week 1 (15th Oct 10)

Study Diary-Week 1 (15th Oct 10)

It is difficult to decide where to start. After choosing the subject of Sally Mann’s photo, I drew a few questions that I’m curious to know. Then I spend a lot of time going through the websites and start to collect useful information. It is vital to understand the background of Sally Mann and find out more about the photo.

The image had driven my desire to dig deeper, beyond the image iteself to look into something deeper. But then I realized that the resource from internet is far from enough. In order to look more specifically into the research of the image, I have to access more recourse. There are some books of Sally Mann from the campus library as well as books by many other famous photographers that may be helpful. They could be major recourse that I will be looking into in the near future.

Also I had come up with different questions and developed deeper into the image. Although at early stage of the research, I had realized that every single detail may result in the final stage of research. The questions that I raised may be quite simple but it is never easy to find out answers. They may lead to wider topics relating to photography such as how color is applied in photography. And all these come from this particular image of Sally Mann. To find out more, I may also need to conclude other works by her.

With limited time for the research, I have to learn how to organize my time well. To achieve that, I have to take down steps in my notebook of how I will conduct my research. Certain time of reading has also been set for each week, and I had also put up my findings on the blog. I also take note of useful information that I have from daily reading, as it will be easier for me to refer back and keep any useful part that I may easily missed.

In order to support my point, I will also need to provide more evidence. That means more work to be done and it could also be quite challenging. To begin with the long process of research, I have also kept notes of further materials that I will be looking at in the study diary. The research itself had been interesting but also tiring so far, yet I have definitely learnt a lot through this exploring experience.

• Some of the Further Resources from my notebook : documentary film<Ashes and Snow> by Gregory Golbert, <Schindler’s List> by Steven Spielberg, history of photography, theories about colors,

RD3-Sally Mann

Sally Mann ( Q1 to listed questions)

  

(Online Image: http://look3.org/wp-content/gallery/headshots/9-portrait-of-sally-mann.jpg, accessed on 14th Oct 10 )

Sally Mann is an American Photographer, best known for her large black and white photographs, first of her young children, then of landscapes suggesting decay and death.

I picked this photo of her from the internet in black and white without a second thought. I feel like influenced by her already that black and white is something beautiful rather than color photos. I had always been fasinated with black and white photos and her photos are great collections in black and white. Somehow she had planted the like of monochrome in me without noticing it. Actually her monochrome photos have both been successful both commercially and popular within galleries. The research will obviously allow me to know more about Sally Mann and this particular image.

But apart from the image which I will be analyzing in the future few weeks, I also want to focus specificly on the effect of black and white photos comparing to color photos and find out why Sally Mann chose to do her photos in such ancient way of photo. There are also some other relevant topics extended from the image such as the nudity in image, I believe they could all be very interesting to look at.

In this entry, I looked at her profiles through a variety of sources. There are many different versions of Sally Mann’s profiles, most are briefly compiled. So I decided to take some creditable website resource such as houkgallery and Art21 who also collect Sally Mann’s photographs. Then I reorganized the information picked from these websites accordingly. They are clearly classified into four categories: her background, career, recognition and publications.

The reason I spend so much time doing this and going through her profile in detail is because it is important to know who she is and how she grew up. These are all very important factors that may had influenced her work and the way she sees the world. I am confident that my reorganized profile of her will be helpful for future research which I can always refer back to.

Listing out her publications is also an important stage. I will try to get these books and get a sense of her artwork and what she sees from her camera that makes her stand out. I had also found several books of Sally Mann from the libary which I will be able to look into carefully.

1,Background –

Born in 1951 in Lexington,Virginia,Mann was the third of three children and the only daughter. Her father, Robert S. Munger, was a general practitioner, and her mother, Elizabeth Evans Munger, ran the bookstore at Washington and Lee University in Lexington. Mann graduated from The Putney School in 1969, and attended Bennington College and Friends World College. She earned a B.A., summa cum laude, from Hollins College (now Hollins University) in 1974 and a M.F.A. in creative writing in 1975. She took up photography at Putney, where she claims, her motive was to be alone in the darkroom with her boyfriend.  She made her photographic debut at Putney, with an image of a nude classmate. Her interest in photography was promoted by her father. His 5×7 camera became the basis of her use of large format cameras today.

Mann has three children and lives on a farm in Virginia with her husband, Larry. He is a full time attorney, and has muscular dystrophy, with progressive weakness.

 2,Career –

After graduation, Mann worked as a staff photographer at Washington and Lee University. In the mid 1970s she photographed the construction of their new Lewis Law Library, leading to her first one-woman exhibition in late 1977 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.Those surrealistic images were subsequently included as part of her first book, Second Sight, published in 1984. 

Sally Mann’s rich and varied career as a photographer has seen her focus on architecture, landscape and still life, but she is known above all for her intimate portraits of her family, and in particular her young children. Her work has attracted controversy at times, but it has always been influential, and since her the time of her first solo exhibition, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., in 1977, she has attracted a wide audience.

Sally Mann explored various genres as she was maturing in the 1970s: she produced landscapes and architectural photography, and she blended still life with elements of portraiture. But she truly found her metier with her second publication, a study of girlhood entitled At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women (1988). And, between 1984 and 1991, she worked on what is undoubtedly her most famous series, Immediate Family (1992), which focuses on her three children, who were then all aged under ten. Whilst the series touches on ordinary moments in their daily lives – playing, sleeping, eating – it also speaks to larger themes such as sexuality and death.

Mann has always remained close to her roots, and she has photographed the American South for many years, producing two major series, Deep South (Bullfinch Press, 2005) and Mother Land. In What Remains (Bullfinch Press, 2003), she assembled a five-part study of mortality, one which ranges from pictures of the decomposing body of her beloved pet greyhound, to the site where an armed fugitive committed suicide on her property in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. She has often experimented with color photography, but she has remained most interested in photography’s antique technology. She has long used an 8×10 bellows camera, and has explored platinum and bromoil printing processes. In the mid 1990s she began using the wet collodion process to produce pictures which almost seem like hybrids of photography, painting, and sculpture.

 3,Recognition –

Widely renowned, Sally Mann is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships. She is the recipient of countless awards, including the Friends of Photography “Photographer of the Year” Award in 1995, three National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowships (1992, 1988, and 1982), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1987), a professional Fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (1982) and an Artists in the Visual Arts (AVA) Fellowship in 1989. 

Mann was also named “America’s Best Photographer” by Time magazine in 2001. Photos she took have appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine twice: first, a picture of her three children for the September 27, 1992 issue with a feature article on her “disturbing work,” and again on September 9. 2001, with a self-portrait (which also included her two daughters) for a theme issue on “Women Looking at Women.”

She has been the subject of two documentaries: Blood Ties (1994), which was nominated for an Academy Award, and What Remains (2007). She has been the subject of major exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. Her photographs can be found in many public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington,D.C; and the Whitney Museum of American Artny.

4,Publications –

• Second Sight : The Photographs of Sally Mann, David Godine, Boston, 1983
• At Twelve : Portraits of Young Women, Aperture, New York, 1988
• Immediate Family , Aperture, New York, 1992
• Still Time, Aperture, New York ,1995
• What Remains, Bulfinch Press, New York, 2003
• Deep South, Bulfinch Press, New York, 2005
• Sally Mann, 21^st Edistions, South Dennis MA, 2004

source :

http://www.houkgallery.com/artists/sally-mann/, accessed on 14th Oct10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Mann    , accessed on 15th Oct 10

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mann/ , accessed on 15th Oct 10

RD2-Initial reading of the image and first questions

Initial reading of the image and first questions:

This black and white photo features the portraits of three children, a boy and two girls. They are standing in different poses with the boy in the middle and two girls next to him. It is obvious that they are not wearing any top clothes and looking straight into the camera. Judging by the light effect, this photograph is likely to be taken in summer time with sunshine. Although the background is blurred, it is not hard to tell that the scene is set outdoor. However, the location is not quite apparent. It could probably be in the countryside or in a park.

The children pictured are at their young ages but was not afraid of being nude at all. They stand in three different postures of ‘don’t touch me’ and shows a very strong personality as if they looked through the camera to us. Even after more than a decade later, the photo still reveals an impressive yet invisible power. Mouths set, absolutely not smiling, they stare dead on into the eye of the camera, into the eye of whomever would dare stare at them. The tallest boy (presumably the eldest as well) wears pant underneath, nothing on top but some lucky chains. Whether or not the girls wear anything is unknown as the photo only shows the upper part of their bodies. They resemble by certain way of their appearance and hence may be close related, suggesting family members.

The boy’s hair is bit funky and puts his left hand around his waist. The girl on the right leans on to the boy and hugs herself as if to protect herself. She seems like a little bit shy to be seen naked. On the contrast, the girl on the left (presumably the younger one) posed bravely to the camera exposing her chest. She has cute curly hair and puts her hand in the waist.  

There is no doubt that this picture attracts a viewer’s eyesight instantly. Driven by curiosity, I will set off with the following questions to begin my research:

1, Who is Sally Mann?

2, Who are the children and what is the story of the photo?

3, Why do they appear in nude?

4, Why is it in black in white?

These are just primary questions that I raised for the photo. I had learnt Sally Mann’s fame as well as her controvertial work not long after. Yet these are still important for me to start off with my research. Simply by going through Sally Mann’s background can help a lot for my research to understand more about her images. More importantly, I hope the expanded knowledge I am going to learn  through the future research into these questions will lead me to certain stage of understanding the image in a different level.

RD1-Sally Mann: Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia

Image: Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia,(1989),from series of Immediate Family

Photographer: Sally Mann (USA, b.1951)

source : http://www.pbs.org/art21/slideshow/popup.php?slide=545# [accessed on 12th Oct 10]

Note: As a new transfer student, I started on this project much later than the others. Yet I had worked hard in order to catch up. Unfamilar with wordpress, I had precious experience of erasing the blog entries accidently. Then I decided to write everything in my computer first for safe, this had resulted in the date of publishing which could be different to the date I actually accessed some resources as well as the blog entry. This is just a reference for anyone who may be confused about the dates.