the table and with outstretched arms, begins to delicately tip toe across its surface. Her slender body is bathed in a radiant light and she seems to transcend the mundane world around her. In contrast, The Wet Bed (1987), shows Virginia at age two, al so naked, and oblivious to the camera as she lays sleeping on a rumpled bed. She is wondrously angelic, but the sweetness of the moment is marred by a large wet stain clearly visible on the bed. The photograph may be about youthful innocence, but it also suggests the complex realities of childhood : It is not only pure and carefree; rather, it can be uncomfortable, messy, frightening, and sometimes humiliating . Mann is clearly untroubled by documenting these aspects of the life of her family (she has al so portrayed her children's nose bleeds, nasty insect bites, and minor injuries) , for her intent is to show the experien ce of childhood, of the life of the family, in its totality. For Mann to create her work, her children Emmett, Jessie , and Virginia have become her collaborators; certainly it would have been impossible to realize these images without their acquiescence, if not full cooperation. And, the 8 x 10 inch view camera she employs obliges her to carefully plan each composition, sometimes restaging and reshooting scenes if they are initially unsuccessful. The children's
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willigness to support their mother's creative enterprise, however, is not the central issue in evaluating Mann's oeuvre. Apart from the quality of the works-and she is an artist of immense technical skill and expressive power-the real issue is what it means to have one's children so involved j n one's work, and how this effects their psyches. Earlier in her career, in the mid-to-Iate 1980s, Mann captured her young children engaged in everyday pastimes-blowing bubbles, or whiling away the hours playing a board game Increasingly, however, their lives have become imbued with great emotional depth and tension in the act of their documentation. In charting the psychological terrain of childhood, Mann reflects its elaborate process of push and pull, as the child re mains attached to the parent while simultaneously marking distance. When Mann creates an image like Hayhook (1989)-depicting Jessie hanging from a chain attached to an overhead beam, her head thrown back so far that it is barely visible-her intent is not so much to connote the sinister as the unsettling acts that most any child will carry out when left to his or her own devices. There is the suggestion of bodily harrT} in Hayhook, but certainly, more so for the adult viewer than for the young subject. The image manifiests Mann's
own intimate knowledge of her children 's psyches; ultimately, it is a portrait of that essential quality of youth, utter self absorption. It is of course a risk to portray one's child in such a manner, but Mann is able to do so (and to exhibit and publish such a photograph) because of the enormous trust that must serve as the foundation for this kind of creative collaboration . "They're more their pictures than mine, Mann has said. 1 They will stand as an incredible legacy for Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia to confront and muse upon when they are older. And for their adult viewers today, they are poignant reminders of everything that childhood is, and can be. JI
NOTES 1 Sally Mann quoted in Vince Aletti , "Child World Village Voice, May 26, 1992, p. 106 Jl
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