[Leica] Sally Mann

[Doug Cooper <visigoth@echonyc.com>]

I suppose I should have a problem with Sally Mann, but I cut her a lot of
slack, as she's perhaps my favorite living photographer.  Jock Sturges,
now, seems to have a much more prurient relationship to his subject
matter.  And Larry Clark... well, we won't even go there (although I
think he's a talented photographer, as criminal types go:  the Genet of
documentary porn).

Sally Mann's pictures are so unambiguously beautiful that I have a hard
time concentrating on the moral implications of her work.  Will her
children grow up demented?  Hard to say, really.  The photography looks to
me very much a labor of love (of the non-sexual variety), and that may
well be the determining factor.

Nudity itself strikes me as a red herring.  Far more disturbing, to my
mind, is the abuse of child actors, from Judy Garland to Danny Partridge:  
these guys don't stand a chance.  The rape of the private realm in
Hollywood is far more complete, and almost always devastating.  (With a
few hardy souls emerging unscathed:  Shirley Temple, for instance.)