From: Jack Fulton (jefulton1@comcast.net)
Date: 10/17/03-05:44:58 PM Z
Grace Taylor wrote:
> One section discusses the way young children gain a sense of self through the
visual confrontation of mother and child, comparable to looking in a mirror
and seeing (in the mother's responsive face) who they are. With Mann and
her children, often the visual confrontation was not between mother and
child but between child and camera, behind which was the mother. How would
this affect the child's developing self-image? Were Mann's pictures more
about herself than about the children?
Grace brings interesting psycho-logic thinking to the fore here. My
parenthood began in 1962 and we have two girls and I've loved them like,
well, they taught me what love means. Being male, perhaps, and their
father, I've never seen my daughters as sexual beings but held the
understanding all along they would be. Love is one thing, sex another, but
the sex part of love of wondrous in both beauty and pleasure.
Ms. Mann is a lovely woman, slight, long haired, delicate yet mentally
strong. Her photographs taken after the ones of her children, which not a
soul has mentioned, are of her making love with her husband. They too are
redolent of sensuality (of course . . or, should I say, inter-course) and
I've always felt, as Grace notes above, that the images, in general, were
more about herself than the kids. To a degree they were fantasy photographs.
To some they might appear as graphic portrayals of a sensual nature. I would
categorize that POV as lascivious. On another hand, innocent in nature, is
the fantasies of childhood and the innate desire to emulate adult action and
proclivity. I prefer to believe in the latter, hence it makes me understand
that Ms. Mann is a sensual person and that this aspect of her is captured by
the children and then again captured by Ms. Mann. They are, as many of our
own images, self portraits.
Jack Fulton
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