thoughtful, moving photos of young women

books:

	• At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women Aperture, 1991 - 56 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

poignant, painful, and so true

I read all of the reviews before getting this book, and almost didn't buy it because of the negative feedback. I loved Immediate Family, as did many of the other reviewers, and feared that this book would not be as good - as indicated by many of the reviews. I ended up getting it, however, as it is a gift for my teen-age daughter who is an up and coming photographer. I figured that even if the other reviews were right - that the pictures were just images and not "artistic," or that the scenes were all wrong in a protect-your-children kind of way - then my daughter would still enjoy the book as a photographer with an eye for composition.
I am not one bit sorry that I bought the book. Yes, the photos are less "artistic" than Immediate Family, and yes, the book is more blunt in its subject matter, which makes it more painful and not as protective of the children. However, it absolutely captures being 12 and girl-woman - in all of the painful, stubborn, beautiful, childish, and grown-up ways that being 12 actually is.

for more information click here

Better Off As Girls?

Sally Mann succeeds in showing girls on the cusp of womanhood, some of them appearing androgynous, others decidedly feminine. There are a few adults in these pictures, including friends and strangers. There is no nudity other than one of an infant lying reclined between a woman's legs, and neither person can be identified.

This is a "sensitive" subject, and the photographer/author is aware of it. In fact, one of her photographs is of a girl-turning-woman next to an older fellow, in his twenties. When you read the text, you discover the difficulty she had in getting the young lady to stand close to the man in the picture; some time after this photograph was taken, the girl's mother shot him in the face for "harassing" her daughter.

Viewing these girls on their birthdays, lounging with friends, or posing for Ms. Mann, it's easy to feel a pang that is something more than wistful: were there only a world where--girl or woman--they could finally be both natural and secure. Perhaps it is the source of Ms. Mann's great photographic power, that she confronts us with an issue present in life itself. Girls or women, one only wishes they could be happy and free, safe and valued for themselves.

for more information click here

Amazing, thought-provoking book

This is one of my favorite portrait photography books. It's often profoundly disturbing, with such poignant images capturing girls on the verge of womanhood, offering us glimpses not only into the children that they were but into the lives they're going to lead as women, and it isn't all pretty.

Sally Mann is wonderful at capturing the souls of those she photographs, often poor, rural-living individuals, full of pride and hopes and dreams. I have collected many of her books, and this has always been my favorite. It's very controversial - her work always has been - but if you look at it with your eye on that cusp of womanhood, you will see more than you ever dreamed.

Sally Mann is a true visionary photographer who will certainly be hailed in the years to come as one of the greatest photographers of her time.

for more information click here

thoughtful, moving photos of young women

I just check this book out of the library and was immediately drawn to and moved by it. I think Mann does an excellent job of capturing the essence of her subjects--in part, I believe--because she is making images in her own community: she knows, loves, and lives among these people.

The images are well composed, but often subtle: it may be hard to catch the placement of a branch or pool of light, or the use of selective focus that offsets or compliments the subjects.

I also enjoy that she writes about what went into taking some of these images: about placing a young woman while her whole extended family watched; or that for some subjects, so hung out with them, going for drives, sometimes not even thinking about photographing. (I believe that Sally Mann graduated with a degree in English or writing, and it certainly shows in how well she writes about her love of community, about sense of place and about her work.)

Of course, I disagree with some of the harshest reviews her; not only do I like these images and think they are well crafted, but at one point I found myself thinking--if I took the time to study these images, it would go a long way to improving my own portrait photography. What higher compliment could one give another photographer?

David

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

At Twelve is a composite portrait that is both universal and intimately personal. As Ann Beattie writes in her perceptive introduction, "These girls still exist in an innocent world in which a pose is only a pose--what adults make of that pose may be the issue." Sally Mann's work is in the collections of major museums across the country. "Haunting black-and-white studies of children, shown here as surprisingly sensual and often distant beings, the magical keepers of some obscure and vaguely frightening secrets." --Karen Lipson, Newsday At Twelve is a composite portrait that is both universal and intimately personal. As Ann Beattie writes in her perceptive introduction, "These girls still exist in an innocent world in which a pose is only a pose-what adults make of that pose may be the issue." Sally Mann's work is in the collections of major museums across the country. "Haunting black-and-white studies of children, shown here as surprisingly sensual and often distant beings, the magical keepers of some obscure and vaguely frightening secrets." -Karen Lipson, Newsday "Sally Mann's photography is a clear pane . . . not intrusion, but revelation. These young women distill something for the eye . . . something beautiful and sad and moving, something purely female." -Diane Sawyer Introduction by Ann Beattie. Paperback, 9.5 x 11 in./56 pgs

for more information click here