2000-09-05 Recommended for those who appreciate art photography

A very good book which deals intimately with family life. Sally Mann is clearly the loving mother of some very self-possessed and self-aware children. I was concerned before I saw the book about some of the tales that I had heard regarding the content. Frankly, anyone who finds this book prurient needs psychiatric help. Some of the pictures are shocking, it is true, but not in that sense- the viewer is shocked by an awareness of their own inability to help when confronted with the image of a boy with a smashed nose and lip or a girl, unconscious on the surgeon's table, with multiple stitches in a gash on her forehead. Mann understands her antecedents, and there are strong echoes of Weston and Eugene Smith to name but two in this work. The fact is that bringing up children (and I speak as the father of four) is both shocking and beautiful, as are these pictures.