As I was browsing through a "coffee table book" at my best friends house, I came upon this photograph by Sally Mann. I have always been intrigued with her work, but something about this photograph hit me hard, especially with the description. Almost simple and obvious, which I guess is what made it so powerful -- the imagery linked with the description below opened my mind and heart to the idea of one day having my own children, my own family. I stared long and hard at this photograph, then found myself going back to the book to look at it a couple more times. I am looking forward to sharing my life and seeing my children grow up and follow them along their magical journeys through my eyes and through my lens. There's so much more to look forward to in this life.
SALLY MANN
The Last Time That Emmet Modeled Nude, 1987
“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 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 eight 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 slowly moving water. Behind him the trees and sky are reflcted 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.
Although this phogoraphy ostensibly defines such an instant (the last time Emett modeled nude), it is really about time passing, a symbol for something that happened before and something yet to come. The river moves idly, the sun passes overhead, and the trees sway in the still, hot air. The one static element is Emmett, who has caught his mother’s eye. He is frozen in the pose as though trying hard to arrest time. His hands gracefully meet the water’s surface. Are they trying to stop the flow (of time)? It is at this juncture we notice the evidence of motion; like all children he seems fascinated to interact with something so fluid.
In this photograph Mann is metaphorically peeking across the generations of her family, and their gaze is affirmed as she puts herself into the picture. She is looking down at her son through a ground glass as he stares into her large camera. His eyes reflect hers, and suddenly she is looking into a mirror with the simple recognition of memory. As a child she swam in the same river and experienced the same exaltation as time stood still for her. Now she portrays Emmett, as she imagines herself at his age, looking forward and backward simultaneously in order to make sense of such a wonderfully still moment.
“As in all transformations, there is an element of sadness. Something very familiarerly comforting is being left behind for the unknown”, Mann once wrote. For Emmett this is a transformational moment. He is growing up and will no longer pose without his clothes. For his mother there is the sadness of letting go, tempered by the comfort of her memories. For the viewer, that relationship between a mother and son can be so familiar that we too want to jump in for a swim, if only to cool off on a hot summer afternoon.
- Philip Brookman
