Virginia at 4

“These are photographs of my children living their lives…Many of these pictures are intimate, some are fictions and some are fantastic, but most are of ordinary things every mother has seen—a wet bed, a bloody nose, candy cigarettes. They dress up, they pout and posture, they paint their bodies, they dive like otters in the river. … We are spinning a story of what it is to grow up. It is a complicated story and sometimes we try to take on the grand themes: anger, love, death, sensuality, and beauty. But we tell it all without fear and without shame.”

-Sally Mann, Immediate Family, 1992

When Sally Mann’s Immediate Family opened at Chicago’s Edward Houk Gallery in 1990, she faced strong criticism for displaying nude photographs of her children. The series garnered Mann widespread fame, while also throwing her into the center of a censorship controversy focused on the representation of children’s bodies. Implications of sexuality, morality, and freedom of expression were among the topics under debate.