From: Galina (galina@online.no)
Date: 10/20/03-11:38:29 AM Z
Jack,
finely a voice that is not going bananas!
I both agree and disagree with you here. Naturally, these photographs
are not portraits of the subjects, but the ego-trip of the artist.
Children are innocent, the artist is not. It is the artist who shows
sensuality with the lining of brutality and violence. It is like in a
discussion about rape: are the victims provoking the act of violence by
the way they look, the way they dress, the way they are?
Sally Mann is seeing sensuality in her kids walking around naked, but
it is her choice to offer her observations for a public viewing. She
knows, that she is not the only one interested in that kind of
sensuality. She knows that the pictures are "working". So she is not
able to think of her children as individuals, she is using them to show
her own visions...
I do not think the pictures are her self-portraits though... I am
afraid they are a calculated success, conceptual fake... raskolnokovīs
murder of the old lady...
I am interested in the subject of crime and punishment: is it allowed
that young and talented Raskolnikov kills the old lady? Her money can
be so much more useful to the world when transfered to his pockets?
It is Raskolnikov, who is to find out...
I do not think that provocative art should be forbidden or removed. I
think it is Sally Mann who is to decide what she wants to show.
But I think it is OK to discuss the results of the show...
Somehow I do not want to get to know Sally Mann personally (I have just
got an invitation to her lecture at a school where I often teach in
Copenhagen). But it is my choice, there are many other people, who
would have liked very much to be her friends...
I can only be responsible for my own doings,
so have a look at my brand new web:
www.galina.no
Thanks.
Galina.
On Saturday, Oct 18, 2003, at 01:44 Europe/Oslo, Jack Fulton wrote:
> 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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