Sally Mann

The New Mothers

When looking at Sally Mann's book of photography, I was not all that thrilled at the work she did. Although I'm sure many find it extremely artistic and meaningful, I did not. Personally I found her work some what distasteful and wrong on a lot of levels. Seeing children of all ages nude in a good amount of her photography came off as somewhat grotesque when going through the book. Although most of the photo's were of nude children, I must admit there were a few that I did find to be quite powerful, like the one above of the "new mothers". When looking at this photo I automatically get the sense of children constantly wanting to grow up. You always see children saying how they just want to be older, and how you can see them constantly trying to mimic that of their parents or of other adults around them. Children today are always trying to grow up faster than they should be and this picture portrays that very well. Not only can a viewer see that the children are holding cigarettes and babies, essentially portraying a mother, but the looks on the childrens faces are quite intense as well. Their faces are what I would picture a worn out mothers face to look like, tired and just in need of a cigarette break. The fact that she was able to captivate this emotion from a young child is beyond impressive.