Photographs of Discomfort

Where: National Gallery of Art, West Building

When: closing May 28, 2018

Apologies for the radio silence lately; I'll blame it on the weather, other lunch time obligations and an ever-burgeoning workload.

This week's sojourn was to the National Gallery, to see a large show (really too long for a lunch hour) of Sally Mann's photographs.  A native of Virginia, she photographed the American South, both its people and its landscape.  I went in expecting to see standard photography and left feeling disquieted and slightly disturbed.

The first room contains photographs of her children.  If I hadn't read the wall notes, I might have thought these were snapshots of family gatherings or the carefree days of childhood, but Mann staged these photos, sometimes shooting and re-shooting them many times until they were just right.  I don't have an issue with an artist wanting to get "the perfect shot,"  but I did feel my eyebrow rise at the thought of posing her children for these pictures, well past the point when it would have been enjoyable.

Many of her photographs are nudes of her children, and we're not talking about baby in the bathtub shots.  There was a side view of one of her daughters, aged 9, that I thought was a bit much.  She is still (all too clearly) a child, but I think that's over the line.  At 9 you have friends, classmates, neighbors etc., and I can't imagine you'd want all of those people to see you naked.  There was also one of her son, with a title something like "This was the last time Emmett posed nude in the river."  The wall notes indicate he'd been posing for a long time in the cold water, and he'd told his mother he was done.  Good for you, Emmett.

Now, I realize I don't know these people and am putting my own feelings onto them.  Perhaps they were all perfectly willing to pose in this way.  The wall notes do indicate that the children helped Mann pick out photos for her book, which seems to indicate consent.  But I couldn't help but think, "These are children.  She is their mother.  How much room do they have to protest?"

Moving on, the show transitions to her landscape photos, which I liked much better.  She traveled to Mississippi to take pictures of the area where Emmett Till was murdered.  I suppose it's a cliche to say the photos were haunting, but that's the best word I can come up with.  She also used the collodion wet plate technique to photograph the forgotten corners  of Civil War battlefields, using the technology of the era to better capture its events.

And there are photographs of the woman who cared for her when she was growing up, Virginia Carter.  We see her, and her with Mann's family and her with her own family.  There are also photographs of young African American men, not people she knew personally, but local college students who modeled for her.

Verdict: I'm not quite sure what to say about these photographs.  I think the landscapes are good, but I think the pictures of her children are borderline voyeuristic.  So I'm left with discomfort.