“What knowing watchfulness in the eyes of a twelve-year-old… at once guarded, yet guileless. She is the very picture of contradiction; on the one hand diffident and ambivalent, on the other forthright and impatient; half pertness and half pout. Impossibly, she is both artless and sophisticated, a child and yet a woman.” - Sally Mann
Few photographers are able to capture the unease, innocence, and pure contradiction of youth quite like Sally Mann. Her black and white photographs show the beauty in coming of age - the constant tension of holding onto the remaining innocence of youth while simultaneously yearning for the appearance of adulthood. The photographs embody a quiet melancholy that almost touches grief because engaging with a photograph of Mann’s is quite like interacting with the fleeting nature of time itself.
