Phtography Essay -- Art, Sally Mann

Sally Manns photographic wreak has received twain reverence and controversy, most notably her book warm Family (1994), which contains nude and suggestive photographs of her three children, has also sparked overwhelming critical discussions and speculation, whilst challenging the prevailing concepts of family and childishness in the United States. Produced immediately after the Reagan revolution, which reinstated family values and a much conventional moral sensibility as vital to the framework of semipublic policy (Berlant, 1997, p. 7), Manns work has resulted in her immersed into debates surrounding child pornography, the inversion of familial relationships, motherhood, and conveying a complex notion of the maternal gaze.Hlne Cixous states that binary oppositions underline most of Western philosophical apprehension e.g. male/female, active/passive, natural/unnatural, logical/emotional (Conley, 2000, p.148) which have the offspring of forming a set of standardised values wit hin patriarchal society. Conversely, Immediate Family moves towards a state where what is traditionally considered antipodal co-exists, where neither is repressed, and offers an alternatively paradigmatic relationship between binary opposites. In addition to this, by considering Manns work in terms of Cixouss understanding of the Freudian concept of the transcendental, a more(prenominal) fluid and permeable reading of Immediate Family can be produced. The Uncanny is characterised by a strangeness that uncovers what is hidden (anxiety) and by doing so, effects a disturbing transformation of the familiar into the unfamiliar (Jackson, 1981, p.65), resulting in an inability to decipher what is considered to be real and what is thought to be imaginary. Mann is known for ten... ... is ultimately the girls putrefaction of the border dividing life and death. The familiar becomes dauntingly unfamiliar, as with dreams that slip previous(prenominal) our perceptual defences triggering a response but never quite unveil their meaning (Williams and Newton, 2007, p.207). Subsequently, this expresses a blurring of boundaries and embodies the notion of metamorphosis where divisions cease to be defined. The spiritedness/inactivity duality of the body defies the binary opposites of rational thinking, and in doing so, introduces the Uncanny into this photograph. The more one analyses and observes this photograph, the more it constantly shifts across the prescribed boundaries of illusion and reality, ofttimes entering controversial areas. Winter Squash demonstrates how Mann takes the viewer from a visual affirmation of childhood and youth, to an inherent fear of death.