I remember seeing this picture some years ago, and since then it has been stuck in my mind.
It has something beautiful in it, but at the same time it made me feel uncomfortable, like there was something out of place. It wasn't just the fact that a little girl was holding a cigarette, it was the seriousness in their faces, there wasn't even a little smile. They seemed adults with the bodies of kids.
Also, their skin looks dirty, and they look hurted.
While searching information about these pictures (I only had seen the first one and the second and third one), I found out that the photographer is Sally Mann, (american, 57 years old), and that the kids portrayed in the pictures are her own children, in the family house in the country. Because of these series of photographies (I didn't post the "heavy" ones), Sally has been highly condemned, but it didn't affect her career and many museums still show her works.
I love her photographs, because they are not the typical ones, you know, cute kids surrounded by clouds of cotton. They are real.
Recuerdo haber visto esta imagen hace varios años, y fue una de esas fotos que se te quedan grabadas en la mente.
Tenían algo de bello pero a la vez transmitían un sentimiento de incomodidad, una sensación de que hay algo fuera de lugar, algo que no está bien. No era sólo el cigarrillo, sino la seriedad en los rostros de los niños que posaban, no se puede percibir ni un atisbo de sonrisa. Parecían adultos en cuerpos de niños.
Además, su piel está sucia, con barro, y parecen decir que son niños maltratados.
Investigando sobre estas fotos, (sólo conocía la primera y las tres siguientes), averigüé que la fotógrafa es Sally Mann, (57 años, americana) y que los niños que aparecen son sus propios hijos, retratados en su finca familiar. Por estas fotografías (y eso que no he posteado las más "fuertes", Sally fue duramente criticada, pero esto no afectó a su carrera y aún muchos museos importantes siguen exponiendo su trabajo.
Tenían algo de bello pero a la vez transmitían un sentimiento de incomodidad, una sensación de que hay algo fuera de lugar, algo que no está bien. No era sólo el cigarrillo, sino la seriedad en los rostros de los niños que posaban, no se puede percibir ni un atisbo de sonrisa. Parecían adultos en cuerpos de niños.
Además, su piel está sucia, con barro, y parecen decir que son niños maltratados.
Investigando sobre estas fotos, (sólo conocía la primera y las tres siguientes), averigüé que la fotógrafa es Sally Mann, (57 años, americana) y que los niños que aparecen son sus propios hijos, retratados en su finca familiar. Por estas fotografías (y eso que no he posteado las más "fuertes", Sally fue duramente criticada, pero esto no afectó a su carrera y aún muchos museos importantes siguen exponiendo su trabajo.
Me gustan estas fotografías simplemente porque no son las que solemos ver, las típicas fotografías de niños sonrojados y rodeados de nubes de algodón. Éstos son reales.
She answered to an article who said that she was using her children for personal purposes saying this:
(...)It's not like these kids had to keep some shred of personal dignity squirreled away from their prying Mom's camera lens. They were -- and are still -- active participants in the art-making that goes on all around them. Art is in every aspect of our everyday life -- in the gardens we have designed around the house, in what we put on our walls, in the pumpkins we cut for Halloween. And any parent knows that you can't force a child to make art; they have to cooperate, they have to want to be part of the process. When we made these pictures, the kids knew exactly what to do to make an image work: how to look, how to project degrees of intensity or defiance or plaintive, woebegone, Dorthea-Lange dejection. I didn't pry these pictures from them -- they gave them to me. Remember that and the images take on a wholly different meaning -- no deep psychological manipulations or machinations, just the straight-forward, everyday telling of a story (...). Continue reading
(...)It's not like these kids had to keep some shred of personal dignity squirreled away from their prying Mom's camera lens. They were -- and are still -- active participants in the art-making that goes on all around them. Art is in every aspect of our everyday life -- in the gardens we have designed around the house, in what we put on our walls, in the pumpkins we cut for Halloween. And any parent knows that you can't force a child to make art; they have to cooperate, they have to want to be part of the process. When we made these pictures, the kids knew exactly what to do to make an image work: how to look, how to project degrees of intensity or defiance or plaintive, woebegone, Dorthea-Lange dejection. I didn't pry these pictures from them -- they gave them to me. Remember that and the images take on a wholly different meaning -- no deep psychological manipulations or machinations, just the straight-forward, everyday telling of a story (...). Continue reading
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