| “We are spinning a story of what it is to grow up,” wrote Sally
Mann in her book about childhood, Immediate Family. These are summer pictures
of a personal place, where water cools the humid Southern air like a welcome
thunderstorm, and the smells of nature bring memories flooding from a corner
of the brain that plays back old home movies we didn’t know we had. Some
of the photographs are fiction and some quite real, but all connect Mann’s
children to her own childhood in a way that does not separate art from real
life.
Emmett was ten when he posed for his mother in The Last Time Emmett Modeled
Nude. He is pushing against the lazy current of a river. It’s a familiar place
where Mann herself grew up, and now she watches her own children playing out
their dreams in concert with her camera. Emmett’s body cuts into the
stillness of the moving water. Behind him the trees and sky are reflected in
the water
like a solid universe swirling about his head; its illusionistic firmness subverts
the verity of the real trees on the horizon. Neither world is absolute for
a young boy at such a transitional moment in his life. . . .
:: Philip Brookman, Director of Curatorial Affairs
Corcoran Gallery of Art |
Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from
the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
:: Purchase A Capital Collection online
:: The Curator's Journals Project
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