Sexualizing Children: Thoughts On Sally Mann

Sally Mann is an amazing photographer. She has taken pictures of the south where she is from since the 1970s. Her work is beautiful and is known for being very controversial.Her second and third published photography books received the most negative backlash, “Immediate Family,” (her third book) shows her children being children at their family farm, some of the pictures show her children naked, and “At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women,” (her second book) captures the emotions and identities of adolescent girls during the hard times of puberty. One of the photos in “Immediate Family,” is of her son, Emmett, playing and swimming in a river like all children do, but what some people’s issue with this photo is that her son is naked. The “Immediate Family” book/series is said to be one of the best photography books of our time. Some people see her work as a thing beauty, but most see it as crossing the line.
Gordon, Mary. "Sexualizing Children: Thoughts on Sally Mann." Salmagundi, no. 111, Summer96, pp. 144-145. EBSCOhost, library.collin.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hft&AN=509610591&site=ehost-live. Gordon wants us, the reader, to think of the relationship of the mother and child, and says that Sally Mann has made her young children become objects of sexual attraction. Gordon also questions Mann’s ethics of her
Hold Still: a Memoir with Photographs. New York, Little Brown and Company, 2015. Mann’s book is a book of her life. It has the history of her parents as well as the history of her husband’s parents, her father was a small town doctor but his favorite pastime was making weird sculptures, he was an artist at heart and the reason she started taking pictures. Mann has three chapters(6, 7, and 8) in the book talking about how she came to taking the pictures for the series “Immediate Family” and the aftermath(controversy) of it. This is a strong source because it’s written by Sally Mann and it’s in her point of