Sally Mann Photographs Removed from Texas Museum Exhibition after Outcry

[Taylor Nankervis]

I find it exploitive and leaning heavily on shock value.

Indeed. It is what it is.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

I would strongly advise moderators to block further comments on this thread. It's not going to end well.

 

[DevStopFix]

I think it’s a bit disingenuous to call it censorship if public outcry is what has led to the action taken.

 

[Taylor Nankervis]

I would strongly advise moderators to block further comments on this thread. It's not going to end well.

Seconded. Please do.

 

[lecarp]

If you substituted the children for garden gnomes or teddy bears, I doubt the Art World would ever have noticed...therefore...I find it exploitive and leaning heavily on shock value.

Self portraits would have taken real guts.

I doubt an Adams Moonrise Garden Gnome would have amounted to much either. Now the teddy bear thing, that's just wrong!

 

[MurrayMinchin]

I doubt an Adams Moonrise Garden Gnome would have amounted to much either.

If Mann's children are taken out of the frame, you are left with rather dull photos.

If you take the graveyard and sunlit crosses out of Adam's Moonrise, it would still be an interesting photo.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Anyone who dislikes the work is free to articulate that dislike, and it is welcomed in a dispassionate, reasoned argument. And anyone who dislikes the work is free to NOT view it.

 

[retina_restoration]

Five photographs were removed - they were listed in the piece linked to in the original post. You can look up the works by name if you're interested: Popsicle Drips, The Perfect Tomato, The Wet Bed, Another Cracker, and Cereus

I've just refreshed my memory and looked up some of Mann's images.

I suppose, given what's already been stated in this short thread by several posters, I have no right or am an artistic idiot, if I find many of Mann's photographs not only offensive, but down right disgusting. How my feelings are derogatory to all those who disagree with me?

Taking this a bit further, exhibit went on display, some saw the content and called some images out as inadmissible for public view (I assume there was no age limit to see them, or was there ?)

I still don't know which exactly they were (link to article does NOT show any images in question), but given Mann's "style" I can imagine what they look like.

Since when living in a harmonious society means only side has the right to be offended, or outraged ?

You are well within your rights to be offended/disgusted by any art you expose yourself to, that is not up for debate. You are also free to express your displeasure that the work exists and was shown to you.

However, if someone sees work in a gallery and are offended by it, they do NOT have the right to stop other people from seeing that work, and that is what this story is about: some people were offended and decided to force the museum to remove specific works, effectively editing the show and preventing others from seeing it. That kind of censorship is poisonous to society.

That said, I believe the museum is complicit in this by choosing to kowtow to a few outraged zealots. That a museum of modern art should bow to that kind of pressure is deeply troubling and disappointing.

EDIT: since the police essentially "raided" the museum, it's likely that the museum had little choice in the matter and simply had to comply with seizure of the work. I can't assume they agreed to what was being done to them.

Doesn't it all boil down to "If you're likely to be offended by a piece of work, then don't go see it"?. Stay away. Problem solved.

 

[Pieter12]

in poses that are clearly provocative.

To you. That says something, I believe.

 

[lecarp]

If Mann's children are taken out of the frame, you are left with rather dull photos.

If you take the graveyard and sunlit crosses out of Adam's Moonrise, it would still be an interesting photo.

But not art!

 

[Pieter12]

The problem is objectification of children who do not have a legal say in what is happening — particularly portrayed as naked

Ms. Mann specifically asked the children to look at the photos and not show any they objected to.

 

[retina_restoration]

Not an "artist" that I find particularly enthralling.
That oeuvre of photography — in a society that is too easily triggered by incursions on sensitivity, is distasteful and troubling to look over. It brings back memories of similar trigger works by Bill Hanson. The problem is objectification of children who do not have a legal say in what is happening — particularly portrayed as naked (is there a reason so many men on another forum and making salicious and suggestive commentary?), Mann's or those of somebody else, is unnecessary in whatever guise of 'art'.

I have to point out to you that Sally Mann's children are all very much adults now* and they approve of the work and are proud of their mother for creating it. The children were active participants in the making of the photographs and they acknowledge the fact. They also understand - as adults - that there was nothing exploitive about the photographs and their mother was simply depicting their family life as it was, without any agenda to sexualize her children.

If someone looks at these photographs and immediately sees "porn", then it is the imaginations of those observers that are sexualizing the images, not the photographer.

*Note: sadly, her son passed away a couple years back.

 

[Pieter12]

All too often, nudity, even that of children, is mistaken for sexuality, and images are mistaken for actions.--Sally Mann

 

[retina_restoration]

I think it’s a bit disingenuous to call it censorship if public outcry is what has led to the action taken.

The group who submitted the complaint probably represents less than one tenth of a percent of all who have gone to see the show. That can hardly be called a "public outcry".

 

[Pieter12]

If you take the graveyard and sunlit crosses out of Adam's Moonrise, it would still be an interesting photo.

But the necrophiles would be disappointed.

 

[DevStopFix]

The group who submitted the complaint probably represents less than one tenth of a percent of all who have gone to see the show. That can hardly be called a "public outcry".

Call it cancel culture if you'd like. Whether it's "probably" a tenth or otherwise is arguably immaterial. Censorship connotes something more nefarious and sinister carried out by a state or authoritarian regime. Is that what we have here? It isn't. Even if that is what we fear.

 

[Pieter12]

The group who submitted the complaint probably represents less than one tenth of a percent of all who have gone to see the show. That can hardly be called a "public outcry".

In many cases of “public outcry” the complainers have not even been to see the art in question. They are just offended by someone else’s description.

 

[Cholentpot]

I would strongly advise moderators to block further comments on this thread. It's not going to end well.

Are you appealing to censorship?

 

[GregY]

I would strongly advise moderators to block further comments on this thread. It's not going to end well.

Why might that be?

 

[Inomoxo]

Thank you for raising the issue and inspiring the conversation. These works are in a gallery, which means that they (for the most part) will be viewed by those intentionally entering that exhibit. These images, like many, are difficult to view. Sally Mann put it well in a 2016 interview: "I’m not qualified to comment on the legal application of the word “obscenity,” being more in the camp of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who famously said, in 1964, “I know it when I see it.”

 

[Patrick Robert James]

I am not a fan of Mann. I think her best images are her landscapes. Her kid images don't bother me, but I don't think they are all that great either. They are famous of course because of all the hubbub back in the day. After seeing a lot of interviews over the years I have pretty much come to the conclusion that she knew exactly what she was doing back when she took them and subsequently showed them, which to me makes her disingenuous. She does tend to take up subjects that are shocking in ways. Naked children, rotting corpses, black men (as a white woman), her husband's disabilities.

The people that censor these types of things though crack me up. I mean, by censoring it, they are just putting a spotlight on it. Better to just ignore it. Maybe the museum even included those particular images in the show specifically to cause a controversy. Wouldn't surprise me at all. I don't know what other images they included of hers in the show, but IIRC most of the images from that timeframe aren't necessarily nudes. Makes you wonder.

One thing that cracks me up is that the same images that were taken off the wall are all over the internet and on other museum's/auction house's websites. Again, just goes to show you the stupidity of the censorship. Then again, Texas. About all you need to say.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

But the necrophiles would be disappointed.

Someone gave me a t-shirt with...

CHOOSE LIFE
Necrophiliacs Annonymous

...written on it.

While I thought it was hilarious, I didn't wear it out in public.

 

[summicron1]

judging by what's on her web page, anyway, she's a very good technical photographer and a very experimental one and produces some lovely images you either like or you don't, and I can see that being on the extreme ends of that scale.

The police removing art in any setting always reminds me of how Germany under its recent dictator would sanitize art and remove what the leader felt was obscene. Situations that Ray Bradbury described in "Fahrenheit 451" also come to mind, along with many others.

It doesn't really matter whether i like or dislike or am offended or pleased. The instant the state/society starts telling the individual what s/he can do, freedom dies. This, sadly, is just another step in a long line of progress in that direction. Here in Utah the state is already banning books based one one or two people being offended by them.

Is that Bardbury's hound I hear outside my window? Could be.

(Later add: OK, I looked up several of the works allegedly so offensive that they had to be removed. My comment remains unchanged -- they seem, in fact, rather tame. Given the amount of "artistic" photography that normally occupies space in photo magazines, not to mention in art galleries around the world, they're even somewhat conservative. Does nobody remember Robert Maplethorpe?
(Who is making this into a big deal? I don't get it, but then again -- as I said, here in Utah these people are all over -- we seem to be making societal decisions based on the loud actions by a very very few individuals who've decided to use social media to amplify their biases and hate because they know politicians haven't the stones to stand up to them.)

 

[koraks]

I would strongly advise moderators to block further comments on this thread. It's not going to end well.

Moderator note: we seriously consider this, but at the same time acknowledge the validity of a discussion of Mann's work and, by extension, the position of such work in society.
What we do not want, is a dogmatic discussion on what society should look like, nor comments focused on political aspects of crafting (or unraveling) such a society. I have just removed a number of such comments, or comments that formed a response to such removed comments.

We're going to see if this thread can develop in a balanced way that remains within the scope that's outline in our forum rules. In case this proves to be impossible, we may have to shut it down at a later point.

 

[Agulliver]

I am not familiar with her work, so I briefly looked up some of her images. Provocative? Perhaps, but then so was the famous photo of "napalm girl".

It strikes me that the real questions are:
1. Are the images intended to bring about sexual excitement?
2. Were the people in the images actually harmed or put in harm by creating them?

I am, of course, not the arbiter of these things. But I saw nothing sexually titillating in the images that Google presented me with. Nudity in itself, including of children, is not a problem. Heck, my parents took plenty of nude photos of me when I was a baby and child. They just weren't published photographers, though I have chosen in my own adulthood to share some.

I am not sufficiently familiar with Sally Mann or her family to know what the children now think of those images and how they feel about them being on display. It would strike me that actually asking them might be a good step before any authority swoops to remove them from galleries.