Sally Mann's Immediate Family: The Unflinching and Unafraid Childhood

In the fall of 1992, a traveling exhibit opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. The collection was called "Immediate Family", and it was by a young and lesser known photographer by the name of Sally Mann. The images, taken from 1984 to 1991 detailed the complex childhoods of her three children; Emmet, Jessie and the youngest, Virginia. At the time of the first gallery opening, Mann was unaware of the media attention she would attract, and the controversy that her work would stir up. To her, they were little more than tender, maternal photographs of her children. 

Yet to others, they were child pornography, and the mark of an irresponsible mother. Sally Mann's "Immediate Family" shows us the sensuous and sometimes disturbing side of childhood. The controversy that "Immediate Family" stirred up is a direct reflection of the times in which it was produced, and says more about the adult viewer than of the child subject. Sally Mann chooses to explore the concept of childhood and "growing up" using a variety of the sensual, reality and the fantastic; all through a maternal eye. 

"Immediate Family" is a collection of photographs taken in rural Virginia, where the children, and Mann herself, spent their childhoods. Mann photographed the children and the landscape through a massive 8 by 10 view camera, staging elaborate portraits that still lie within the realm of possibility. Mann states that these photographs are "of my children living their lives here too. Many of these pictures are intimate, some are fictitions and some are fantastic, but most are of ordinary things that every mother has seen" (Mann) In most of the images, the children appear nude, or partially nude. 

They posture, as children do, but through a combination of suggestive titles and lack of clothing the images take on a more overtly sexualized appearance. Many have hastily labeled this as indecent, and consequently, something they would rather ignore.