Before visiting this exhibition, my mind was primed for a certain interpretation of it. The recent federal moves to erase bodily autonomy from anyone other than a cis white man, plus the controversial censorship of Mann’s photos at an exhibition in Fort Worth, TX—accusers wildly claimed that Mann’s depiction of children amounted to child pornography—led me to assume that Sally Mann’s exhibition “At Twelve” at Jackson Fine Art would be a despairing meditation on the ails of womanhood in the United States. And while there is most certainly darkness within this exhibition, there is quirk and humor and naïve boldness that kindles warmth and feels like a breath of fresh air.
As the title of the exhibition makes clear, the twelve photographs depict girls, all aged twelve. In many ways, these photographs feel playful. In Nicole with Cat (At Twelve) (1983-1985), a girl lounges on a day bed, her head lying on the armrest as she smiles at the camera. Wrapped in her arms is a ceramic white cat, and behind the daybed, a painted backdrop of picturesque countryside. An amusing antic in which the girl can see herself in a place and in a life that is not her own.
These antics continue in Crimson and Lithe (At Twelve) (1983-1985) as a pair of girls sit below an illustrated portrait of two women, the girls identically posed with exactitude. These girls are playing dress-up, trying on different selves in an attempt to find one that rings most true. A formative time full of play and naïve boldness. Initially, I viewed these moments as light-hearted and almost vapid. Indulgences at which I chuckled.
But the joking turned uneasy in Spider Plant (At Twelve) (1983-1985), which shows a girl in a sequined leotard holding a baton at her waist. Standing before a kitchen, her face is entirely hidden behind a hanging spider plant. The frontality of the figure, with its likeness obscured by an ordinary object, is a dead ringer for a Magritte painting. A kind of compositionally humorous move I have a hard time believing originated from a twelve-year-old. If the intention of this photograph is not to capture the girl in an imaginative moment of futuristic exploration, what is its intention? This series of portraits feels stilted by Mann’s intervention of adult humor, an exploitation of her subject’s relative innocence. For these girls, these moments are anything but jocular.
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The photos in this series, originally published as a photobook, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women, in 1988, have occupied an uneasy space in Mann’s oeuvre—less polarizing than those of Immediate Family (1992) but still capable of eliciting impassioned responses. Twelve is a year of outsized importance. The last year before the teens, a slew of years that lead into the onset of the adult decades—one’s twenties, thirties, forties and on. Twelve is the last standalone year before, or if, one ages to one hundred. This is not to say that twelve is the most important year of one’s life, but its numerical significance reflects the seriousness of these girls’ explorations—a feeling seen most clearly in Cindy and Reese’s Pieces (At Twelve) (1983-1985).
A girl kneels on an ornate loveseat. Facing away from the camera, she rests her arms on each side of a curved backrest; her head is bowed so low that it is removed entirely from sight. She appears as a headless girl, hanging from the loveseat by her arms in a crucifixion-esque composition. My earlier snorts of indulgent humor now feel ultraviolent, as if my assumption of these girls’ brainlessness literally beheaded them. While some of these moments remain undeniably humorous, they should not be treated as inane. Lack of empathy does not bode well for anyone, especially when impressed upon women who are trying on more mature versions of themselves.
“Sally Mann, At Twelve“ is at Jackson Fine Art through March 29, 2025.
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