Police in Texas have seized several works by the photographer Sally Mann from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, following a complaint that the images portray naked children and could be seen as pornographic. Created in the 1980s and 90s and depicting Mann’s kids when they were young, the photographs had been on display as part of the group show Diaries of Home (until 2 February)—which also features works by a dozen other artists including LaToya Ruby Frazier, Nan Goldin, Deana Lawson, Catherine Opie and Carrie Mae Weems.
Although the exhibition has been open since mid-November, it seems Mann’s photographs first came under scrutiny just before Christmas, when The Dallas Express received a tip from a local resident and sent its staff writer Carlos Turcios to investigate. Turcios, who describes himself as a “dedicated conservative activist”, published his first story about the photographs on 23 December under the headline “Exclusive: Is the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Promoting Child Porn?” Conservative groups and politicians joined the outcry, and Turcios has written several follow-up articles in the interim. The debacle ultimately led to the seizure of Mann’s works after a police report was filed against the museum and an investigation was launched.
In a statement emailed to The Art Newspaper, a spokesperson for the museum wrote: “An inquiry has been made concerning four artworks in the temporary exhibition Diaries of Home. These have been widely published and exhibited for more than 30 years in leading cultural institutions across the country and around the world.”
The National Coalition Against Censorship has condemned the seizure of the photographs. “The allegation that these works are child-sexual-abuse material is not just disingenuous, it is deeply dangerous to the freedom of the millions of Americans who wish to document the growth of their own children without the threat of government prosecution,” the group wrote in a statement on 9 January. “Furthermore, it assumes the perspective of the pedophile, and degrades the seriousness of real incidents of child abuse.”
Artists At Risk Connection, an international organisation devoted to advancing artistic freedom, also made a statement condemning the seizure of Mann’s works.
The current situation is reminiscent of past battles involving cultural conservatism and art censorship, and this is far from the first time Mann’s images of her children running around naked on their remote farm in Virginia have been labelled “child pornography”. In fact some of these same photographs, largely from Mann’s series Immediate Family, had already been the subject of this kind of scrutiny shortly after they were first created more than 30 years ago.
Mann has always held that her children consented to having their pictures taken and were integral in the photo-making process—more collaborators than subjects of her works. In a 2015 essay for The New York Times, the photographer called her kids “visually sophisticated, involved in setting the scene, in producing the desired effects for the images and in editing them…I gave each child the pictures of themselves and asked them to remove those they didn’t want published.”
On the Modern’s website, a text devoted to Mann’s work reads: “In showing her children naked, moody and in suggestive situations, Mann evokes an edgy, dark side of childhood that can be raw and unsettling.” The text further describes past controversies over the Immediate Family works, noting that several of these “became ensconced in the culture wars of the late 1980s and 1990s. In the media, some images were presented in isolation from the series, becoming touchstones for moral and political debates about art and censorship. Since then, the knee-jerk controversy has faded.”
The Modern is closed through 10 January due to inclement weather.
