Photographers do not rock the boat. Photographers are traditionally conservative, and while they may push the boundaries of their art, they rarely create much of a stir outside of the photography circle.  Sally Mann is one of the few exceptions that I know of. Sally published "Immediate Family" as her second published work. The backlash, especially after a Time Magazine article was tremendous. Her sin? She photographed her children, occasionally in the nude. 

To my way of thinking the backlash is simply beyond comprehension. Pictures of children are innocent and cannot be viewed in any other way. Artistically photographed, by a caring and talented mother cannot possibly be viewed in another light. Imagine my shock when my own family members disagreed with me. It polarized us. Some, including my wife, view it as a violation of trust and the sin of overexposure which children are not prepared for. 

I find the work breathtaking. My favorite images are of the kids fully clothed but almost all of them are amazing. Yes she has a few images that are a miss in my book, composition is a bit forced or the emotional link fails to reach me. It is easy to sit and criticize knowing that at her worst, Sally is a far better photographer than I will ever hope to be. I can just look at the images through my own imperfect and flawed perspective, carrying my own memories and superimposing them on what Sally presents.

Sally Mann is from the Lexington Virginia, and she is linked to that landscape in a way that you cannot view her work in isolation. She has a sense of place that transcends her photography and her writing. She is smart, too smart. She has lived her life one step ahead of everyone else and in her youth she enjoyed it.

She took massive risks, in her sport (cross country long distance horse racing), in her love life and in her artistic choices. She used gear and methods that have not been popular since the civil war which again speaks to her link with Virginia. 

Her pictures in Immediate Family are packed with personal symbolism, not to be confused with the art history class, "dig into the image to find the true meaning of the image" kind of symbolism.  It is packed with childhood symbolism. Kids at play, kids at rest and bored kids. Something rarely seen today, but kids who are bored, looking for something to do.

These symbols found in every image speak to a childhood, maybe even her kids childhood but definitely my own childhood. Laying on a old rug, sharing it with a dog resting, I can feel the rug, smell the dog and remember that moment.

Her equipment lets her capture images that are almost dreamlike. Gone is the digital clarity, the micro contrast that makes every boarder seem razor sharp. Here we have images of an old lens, opened up to a wide aperture which drops the depth of field right down. Focus becomes less important and the lens transmits its image more through emotion that through image quality.

I love this picture. Composition is spot on with the child's mouth just in the frame, and the flowers hung across the shoulders. The flower is a bit more in focus but everything else exists in a dream like state. 

It is as if I had dreamed this. A memory of a dream I had a long time ago, and there is Sally, with her old camera ready to capture it.

This is my favorite image of them all. Here Sally has her three kids, her son on stilts, her youngest daughter looking at her brother and her eldest daughter with a candy cigarette.  How do I know it is candy, I don't and frankly I do not care.

The look in her eyes is one of rebellion, a 'fuck it' attitude that clashes with someone so young, yet I remember feeling that same way when I was her age. Again the image is not of three kids that I will never meet, it is an image of my childhood emotion. 

Photographically I love the composition, the feel of the image is amazing and the depth of field is enough to show us what is happening but not enough to inundate us with detail. Sally does not need detail, the look, the swagger and the attitude reminds me of my childhood rebellion feelings. It is not about the girl, it is about me.

Here is another one of my favorite images. The old pickup reminds me of the old vehicles around the ranch the I played in when I was a kid. The odds and ends that kids play with, the make believe world that they can create in a place with great space.

I also see the sibling love which turns to hate in a childhood instant, only to bounce back to love. Kids emotions are so complicated which is why I find it difficult to contemplate my childhood but Sally's images captures what I find so difficult to define. 

The photographs are not of children they are of childhood. Once you see the images through this perspective the brilliance of the art comes through. This is a book on childhood, my own childhood. 

Sally and her family ran off to a secluded farm in Virginia. They sought isolation and room to live life but they also ran. Ran from the cities, stress and the outside influences that are so muted when in isolation. The perfect beauty of her farm, her respect for the place and its history lulled her into believing that she was protected. She had outsmarted life one more time. Unfortunately this was a myth, one I have often dreamt of myself.

The world came crashing into her ideal life, first with the backlash of this body of work, then through the illness of her husband and ultimately with the untimely death of her son. Sally Mann has suffered more than many of us. She has suffered not only due to what has occurred to her and her family, but also because of her artistic intelligence. She cannot let an idea pass without picking it up. She was unable to leave the normal paranoid fear parents have pass, she had to stop it, pick it up and photograph it. Many of her images of the kids are startling because they play out the worst case scenario of a child being hurt.

She has to study the pain, the suffering and understand it intellectually as well as artistically.  I do not pretend to understand her, but I believe this to be true. I see it in her photographs and her autobiography which was recently published and which I devoured within days or receiving it.  

I have not explored Sally's work after 'Immediate Family' which includes landscapes and a series on death and the human body. I have stopped at this work and am living a little within this work. I do not want to move on from her work, from the childhood emotions she has captured so well. Beyond this we have beauty and complex concepts on death and what remains of a life spent.