Sally Mann Photographs Removed from Texas Museum Exhibition after Outcry

[MattKing]

I think the parents would be prosecuted under today's laws.

It was probably in California, so I doubt it!
Although technically, it could be Washington or Oregon - probably not there either.
It fascinates me how much attention is paid to the viewpoints of others who are totally unconnected with that which actually happened.

 

[Arthurwg]

Somehow I find "Child in the Forest" to be rather ugly.

 

[Don_ih]

Later in life, the girl in the Child in Forest wrote that she was told to take her clothes off by her father and later had mixed feelings about the whole results that affected her life. Both her mother and father were involved in setting up the photograph. I think the parents would be prosecuted under today's laws.

She seems quite proud of being in the photo.
And her parents did nothing illegal.

The irony - in my mind - is that few see the connections between the effects that their respective work have on us.

I'm having a bit of difficulty deciphering what that sentence means, actually. The work that each of them do independently cause effects on us (an audience/viewer) that are connected (although they each have no connection) that few see (or can see?) and that's ironic? Or did you use the pronoun "their" to refer to "each" singularly (gender-neutral phrasing)? Does "few" refer to the producers of the work or the audience/viewers? Or does "few" refer to a subset of "us" (viewers/audience) that is capable of seeing the connections?

 

[VinceInMT]

….. Fortunately, we still can't go to jail for our thoughts.

As long as we keep them to ourselves.

 

[VinceInMT]

…..due to the publicity around religious authority abusing children, and even civilian authority like scout masters abusing children away at camp….

Just a point of clarity. While the scouts are not a religious organization, they do have a religious element. Their denial of membership to atheist kids was a big case about 35-years ago or so. A couple years ago my neighbor kid was finishing up his Eagle Scout merit badges and I helped him with the photography one, teaching him film work and turning him loose in my darkroom. When it came time for a BSA counselor to review his work, there wasn’t one in the state and I was asked to sign on and do so. I had to take a 4-hour online course to get “certified” and the bulk of the content was around bullying and preventing sexual abuse. Also, I was required to sign that regardless of my own beliefs or non-beliefs, I had to agree to “abide” by the organization’s “religious element.”

 

[Dustin McAmera]

At least in the UK, the Scouts' Promise exists in versions for atheists (and people with 'no faith background'), and Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Humanist, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh wordings. No alternative is offered to the promise to do one's duty to the King.

 

[retina_restoration]

We are in the weeds now, aren't we?!

 

[BrianShaw]

We are in the weeds now, aren't we?!

… and a totally different forest.

 

[retina_restoration]

Later in life, the girl in the Child in Forest wrote that she was told to take her clothes off by her father and later had mixed feelings about the whole results that affected her life. Both her mother and father were involved in setting up the photograph. I think the parents would be prosecuted under today's laws.

Alan,
Would, or should?

What do you think should happen with the Fort Worth/Sally Mann case? What would be the correct outcome, in your opinion?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Alan,
Would, or should?

What do you think should happen with the Fort Worth/Sally Mann case? What would be the correct outcome, in your opinion?

I think the DA should return photos after the Exhibition is over and move on. It's not clear Texas law was violated.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Just a point of clarity. While the scouts are not a religious organization, they do have a religious element. Their denial of membership to atheist kids was a big case about 35-years ago or so. A couple years ago my neighbor kid was finishing up his Eagle Scout merit badges and I helped him with the photography one, teaching him film work and turning him loose in my darkroom. When it came time for a BSA counselor to review his work, there wasn’t one in the state and I was asked to sign on and do so. I had to take a 4-hour online course to get “certified” and the bulk of the content was around bullying and preventing sexual abuse. Also, I was required to sign that regardless of my own beliefs or non-beliefs, I had to agree to “abide” by the organization’s “religious element.”

I'm not sure how religious elements in the scouts affect scoutmasters' sexual abuse of younger children in their care any more than religion has to do with church authorities abusing kids. It's all bad. It's people using their positions of power to hurt others, especially children, which is despicable.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Read the whole essay.
Not just the short part about short term discomfort.

Neither of us are psychiatrists. So we don't know the long-term effect. Children tend to support and believe what parents feed them. But she did say this as a child when articles about the photograph became published that she showed in her school's "show and tell".
===
All those wonderful feelings, however, vanished the moment I held up the clipping. What I saw was shock and disbelief, what I heard was giggling, what confronted me were waves of embarrassment and discomfort. In that moment, I felt "naked" for the first time in my life and I discovered just how different my life and my family were from those of most of my friends and classmates.

My teacher was not very understanding or comforting, and the day wore on interminably before I was able to go home. Once there, I found the love and wisdom I needed to feel right and whole again...

 

[Dustin McAmera]

What that excerpt describes isn't the girl realising the wrongness of what she and her parents had done, but the meanness of kids who knew no better, and the failure of the teacher to teach at a critical moment.
If the knee-jerk giggles and mockery of a class of junior school kids were enough to condemn an idea, we'd have no vegetarians or methodists, no tall people, and nobody would ever get a new haircut without fear. They are a junior pitchfork-wielding mob until they learn tolerance; we shouldn't frame our ideas of what's right round that reaction.

 

[Don_ih]

They are a junior pitchfork-wielding mob until they learn tolerance

More like until they learn to not say things out loud....

 

[Pieter12]

Hasn't this thread run out of oxygen yet?

 

[BrianShaw]

Hasn't this thread run out of oxygen yet?

Oxygen ran out a couple of days ago. Hot air too. Now it seems to be methane powered.

 

[MTGseattle]

OK, now you've done it. I'm actually going to take her book off the shelf and have a look at it.

 

[snusmumriken]

What that excerpt describes isn't the girl realising the wrongness of what she and her parents had done, but the meanness of kids who knew no better, and the failure of the teacher to teach at a critical moment.
If the knee-jerk giggles and mockery of a class of junior school kids were enough to condemn an idea, we'd have no vegetarians or methodists, no tall people, and nobody would ever get a new haircut without fear. They are a junior pitchfork-wielding mob until they learn tolerance; we shouldn't frame our ideas of what's right round that reaction.

Well said.

 

[cmacd123]

No alternative is offered to the promise to do one's duty to the King.

To be way out in the weeds, ( We are in the weeds now, aren't we?! ) The King or Queen is by that office also the Head of the Anglican Church. "Charles III D.G. REX " being on the Current coins. (By the Grace of God King) thus the crowning taking place in Westminster Abbey

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

What that excerpt describes isn't the girl realising the wrongness of what she and her parents had done, but the meanness of kids who knew no better, and the failure of the teacher to teach at a critical moment.
If the knee-jerk giggles and mockery of a class of junior school kids were enough to condemn an idea, we'd have no vegetarians or methodists, no tall people, and nobody would ever get a new haircut without fear. They are a junior pitchfork-wielding mob until they learn tolerance; we shouldn't frame our ideas of what's right round that reaction.

Certainly, you could see the difference between trying out a new haircut and stripping your child naked for a photograph in the woods that is then published publicly throughout the world. Everyone would agree that it's fine for an adult to try out new art that affects only them. But to drag your own child into that art and demean her is child abuse.

 

[snusmumriken]

Certainly, you could see the difference between trying out a new haircut and stripping your child naked for a photograph in the woods that is then published publicly throughout the world. Everyone would agree that it's fine for an adult to try out new art that affects only them. But to drag your own child into that art and demean her is child abuse.

I don’t understand why you think that photo demeaned the child. By her account, she proudly took the photo to school for show-and-tell. That let her in for embarrassment by immature class-mates, but she got over that and remains proud of the work. Seems to me you are imagining any lasting harm.

Wynn Bullock might have asked his wife to strip instead, but - imagine it - a nude adult would have utterly changed the photo (not that I have any idea what Mrs Bullock looked like!).

 

[MattKing]

Certainly, you could see the difference between trying out a new haircut and stripping your child naked for a photograph in the woods that is then published publicly throughout the world. Everyone would agree that it's fine for an adult to try out new art that affects only them. But to drag your own child into that art and demean her is child abuse.

Your viewpoint is fascinating.
The now adult child felt happy, then briefly embarrassed, then happy and enriched throughout her life by the experience.
But you describe her as demeaned.

 

[Don_ih]

Wynn Bullock's wife and daughters appeared nude in a number of his photos in the 1950s. After he died, his wife became a well-known photographer in her own right.

It's absurd to say there was child abuse without knowing anything about their situation at all. He made use of the girl, but using is not abusing.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I'm gobsmacked. I can't believe people here would undress their 10-year-old daughters naked in the woods to take pictures that they would then publish publicly.

 

[retina_restoration]

I'm gobsmacked. I can't believe people here would undress their 10-year-old daughters naked in the woods to take pictures that they would then publish publicly.

Wynn's photo is as innocuous as they come. I can't believe that all YOU see is a child being "demeaned" and abused. You must see evil in everything you encounter. What a sad way to be.