Family and Subcultures – Books & Web

Sally Mann – Immediate Family

How would you photograph your family? Would they be happy and would it be done in good will?

Mann’s work explores family portraits and snapshots, what they mean and how they are portrayed and seen by the viewers. When she was born 1933, her parents had already got collections among collections of family shots of each other. To think about it, a majority of the human race was born before cameras were invented or wasn’t wealthy enough to be able to afford one, this resulted in when a loved one died/departs there were no visual pieces of prove or memorabilia that they ever lived. It was as if their faces and their presence were completely faded and starts to instantly disappear. Without photographs there is no-way of looking back at your past and remembering it, you can only get told about it and how it was but there will be no actual proof of it.

A camera was a very important part of the family home and what we’ve come to mean in America in the twentieth century by Family.

It was seen as very important to have a camera as it would capture all the special moments and the memories for the children and parents/adults to have when there are older. Just like in today’s world it is the same, nearly every household/family will own some sort of camera, it is something that is seen as a typical and well known piece of technology to have. Everyone knows what they do and why they are made, to capture moments that will never happen again at the same time or just ever.

Photographing your family is completely different than photographing the public and other people in which you do not know personally. There are different ways in which you would photograph them and why you would photograph them like that. Families are a lot more open and the photographs mean something to them, the person who is photographing will have a certain way of taking the image and why they specifically want it like that, just like a professional photographer would.

Mann,S.(1992).Immediate Family, London, Phaidon Press (1992)

Fig.1. p.190 Hirsch. (1997). Family Frames.

 A typical type of family photograph that you would have when you're on holiday, to remind you and give you memories for when you are older and want to look back. Not all families take shots like this though.

Sally Mann’s photographed her children at a young age, but these images didn’t seem like the ‘ordinary’ type of photograph you would imagine a parent would take of their children; let alone show and exhibit for millions of people to see. These photographs represent somewhat of her childhood memories not those of her own children’s’ life. This may be because her father; as Mann did call that he had ‘a keen sense of the perverse,’ as he photographed her in the nude when she was a young girl. This could be a reason to why the woman of the household took the family photographs; as if the man of the house took the photographs some people would see it as wrong and not right in doing so depending upon what the photograph was of and how the children were seen the photograph.  

The New York Times, The Photography of Sally Mann, (1992). The Photography of Sally Mann. Available at (http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/25/magazine/l-the-photography-of-sally-mann-712292.html?ref=sallymann

Fig2.Mann.S. Family Pictures.



Fig3.Mann.S. Family Pictures.

Personally I think Mann's work tells a story of her children's life and how in reality events like these happen and will, just because families don't usually document this; doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Photographs from: - http://sallymann.com/selected-works/family-pictures

Photographs can be seen any many different ways and if you have a connection to them this can conflict what you are seeing and what you want to see.