semiology and sally mann’s candy cigarette – a mother’s perspective on childhood

P a g e | 1LEA CASSANDRA WELLER – 100035841

Semiology and Sally Mann’s CandyCigarette – A Mother’s Perspective on

Childhood

Roland Barthes developed Ferdinand de Saussure’s theory

on semiology in his work Elements of Semiology (1997 translation)

stating that, semiology “aims to take in any system of signs,

whatever their substance and limits,” (1977: 9) declaring that

anything can be analysed using, “if not languages, [a system]

of signification.” (ibid) The relevant systems of signs are

interpreted according to society’s pre-existing codes; theory

and linguistics are continually implemented and developed

allowing one to determine meanings behind the relevant system

of signs. Many meanings are drawn from a single sign:

“objects, images and patterns of behaviour can signify, and do

so on a large scale, but never autonomously; every

semiological system has its linguistic admixture.” (ibid: 10)

Barthes maintains that when you have a visual and linguistic

message, the message is duplicated and confirmed i.e. in film

or advertising: The linguistic system takes up part of the

message in order to confirm it. Using a system of


signification we can evaluate photography to determine

meaning, recognising denotation, connotation and evaluating a

photographs studium, punctum and its reception.

Sally Mann photographed her children Emmett, Jesse and

Virginia (aged under ten) in Virginia, from 1984 onwards, to

produce Immediate Family (1999). Mann’s childhood was full of

freedom and she decided to raise her children in the same way.

The photographs were first exhibited publicly in 1992 at the

Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York and Sarah Parsons remarked that

Mann proved “old-fashioned art photography had much more life

left in it than the art world might have thought.” (2008: 123)

Now Mann’s children are grown up, the photographs are more

easily received. Andy Grundberg reports, that Mann,

“[transgresses] the conventions of family snapshooting.”

(1987: Online) Still critically evaluated today, Candy Cigarette

(Fig. 1) was received as negative and Parsons argues that “the

immediate critical and popular responses […] focused on their

aesthetic, the subjects, and the fact that the artist was the

children’s mother.” (2008: 123) Parson’s declares that “when

art photography is publicly exhibited it will be understood in

relation to public codes already at play, such as those around


motherhood and the protection of children.” (ibid: 125) Mann

made her family’s private space, public, in order to establish

a true representation of childhood but also represented are

“Fact/fiction, mother/child, artist/subject, innocent/knowing,

safety/danger, and free/coerced are all at work.” (ibid) The

photograph attempts to show a maternal ‘look’ but, Mann states

that she could not solely create these expressive pictures:

You can’t force someone to do that. They have togive you the picture. There’s injury and there’s…pain and there’s… anger and there’s resentment intheir faces and there’s, you know, pouting.

(ibid)

Candy Cigarette has different connotations for the maternal

receiver than to the non-maternal receiver. It shows the

children play-acting or as James Steward remarked “playacting

at adulthood.” (2000: 365) Critics like Steward continue to

ask if Mann’s photographs put children at risk with “the

reality of [paedophilia] in society? […] Does such work on any

level exploit these actual children? (ibid) For example some

critics even said she was “sexualizing her children” (Parsons,

2008: 124) and the photographs caused major controversy

resulting in her being accused of child abuse, neglect, mental

trauma, exploitation and even child pornography. She posed no


danger to them and Parsons reports how anxieties about

Immediate Family refuse and/or confuse photography’s division of

public/private: the private, becomes public. Parsons believe

that the photographs power relies on “our reading of them as

windows into Mann’s domestic sphere, encompassing its

inhabitants, spaces and practices;” (2008: 125) challenging

and blurring the imaginary boundaries between public/private.

The title, Candy Cigarette, reassures the viewer that the

cigarette is a candy-stick, not tobacco, suggesting how “the

camera is as adept at depicting the desires of the sub-

conscious as it is in rendering the shapes of everyday life.”

(Grundberg, 1987) Thus, the image manages to cleverly and

semiotically reverse the effects of the visual image. Stephen

Longmire wrote that “several of Mann’s images include flashes

of light reminiscent of nineteenth-century “spirit

photographs,” which set out to prove that the camera sees what

the eye cannot;” (2010: Online Access) moments in life thus

seem fantastical. When applying Barthes theories to Candy

Cigarette, one starts to notice the photographs denotations;

Mann’s daughter, Jessie, holding a cigarette, immediately

grabbing your attention. Then we notice the look on her face:


looking “at the camera with the come-hither stare of the siren

or the hooker;” (Parsons, 2008: 131) she continues that “the

[iconic] cigarette’s being candy throws the iconography into

ironic relief; but there is nothing ironic about [Jessie’s]

face.” (ibid) Jessie’s pose is deemed “unambiguously

sexualized,” (ibid) drawing our attention to the negative

statements around the photograph: “the viewer must encounter a

sexual invitation.” (ibid) Mann expresses that it was a

sensual ‘look’, not sexual, and Ann Beattie attests that the

girls exist in “an innocent world in which a pose is only a

pose,” (1988: 9) it is how the viewer interprets that pose

that is the issue. We then notice Mann’s other daughter,

Virginia – hands on her hips in a ‘tut-tut’ style and her back

to the camera seemingly watching Mann’s son, Emmett, in the

background walking on stilts. The back-ground is blurred and

Jesse wears a white dress: aesthetically complementing the

white cigarette. These elements are easily distinguished

against the black-and-white blur of the photograph; giving one

a smoky, and/or dreamlike feeling – a nostalgic memorial to

childhood.


When investigating the studium we determine why a

photograph has caught our attention; paying attention to the

ethical, social and moral implications. As a spectator, we

reverse the role of the photographer; who produces the

photograph from a created meaning. The receiver then decodes

the photographs connotations: discovering the meaning for

themselves in relation to their society’s codes. Barthes

asserts that the studium causes initial interest in

photographs; whether he determines their historical or

political value, he must engage with “the figures, the faces,

the gestures, the settings, the actions.” (1993: 26) One can

then identify Mann’s intentions; she transgresses the

boundaries of motherhood and privacy. Her photography respects

no “unwritten rules, [airing], if not the family’s authentic

selves, then their games, fears, fantasies and

eccentricities.” (Parsons, 2008: 129) Candy Cigarette’s negative

criticism is taken from a subjective view dependent on the

receiver; and their socio/cultural experiences. Barthes uses

the word punctum to describe a photographs unique use of

actress, prop and gesture to create a negative reaction. “The

second element will break (or punctuate) the studium. [It]


rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and

pierces me.” (1993: 26. Emphasis in original) In Candy Cigarette,

the punctum is the young girl ‘smoking’ and her suggestive

‘look’ causing an uneasy and uncomfortable reaction for the

receiver. Due to the quit smoking campaigns and medical

research a smoking child has a massive impact on the receiver

causing further repercussions for the photographer. One is

again distracted by the title; Candy Cigarette – a childhood

sweet one could purchase from any local shop distracts the

receiver causing a feeling “that its mere presence changes

[one’s] reading, that [one is] looking at a new photograph,

marked in [one’s] eyes with a higher value. This “detail” is

the punctum.” (ibid: 42. Emphasis in original) Mann’s

photograph has the ability to make one reconsider its meaning

once the image has been removed from sight. As Barthes

expresses, “it is best to look away or close your eyes” (ibid:

53) giving one another sense when viewing a photograph. Mann’s

staged photographs involved her children fully in the process

varying between “spontaneity and instruction, narrative and

play, chance and certainty.” (Steward, 2000: 372) Mann states

that they “take on the grand themes: anger, love, death,


sensuality, and beauty.” (Mann, 1992: 7) She expresses that

these are photos of their childhood “most are of ordinary

things every mother has seen; a wet bed, a bloody nose, candy

cigarettes. They dress up, they pout and posture;” (ibid)

presenting us with a maternal ‘look’, even a controversial one

such as in The Wet Bed. (Fig. 2)

Laura DiPrete argues that Mann’s photography raises

“questions about subjectivity and its representation.” (2006:

20) remarking that Candy Cigarette has the ability to draw in the

receiver and create an uncomfortable dreamlike sense of

trauma; demanding us to respond according to society’s codes

“[confronting] us with our fears, conflicts, taboos, normative

perceptions, and ethical imperatives.” (ibid: 21) DiPrete

alleges that corporeal – “relating to a person’s body,

especially as opposed to their spirit” (Oxford Dictionaries:

2013) – trauma narratives are powerful when they involve taboo

subjects. DiPrete’s argument strengthens when she considers

Mann’s claims that “the divided nature of subjectivity, the

children’s “non-innocence,” is related to a similarly strong

claim about the “non-innocence” of signification and vision.”

(2006: 41) DiPrete claims that the signification and


subjectivity of the photograph can be considered as innocent

but the structure of the divided meanings are responsible for

exposing the receiver to signification trauma. Mann’s

photographs show childhood in a traumatic way giving

connotations of a long-forgotten childhood – one we cannot re-

enact. Mann explores children’s dependence on the mother, and

their quest for autonomy and independence. In Still Time it is

written that Mann’s photographs are like a Greek drama,

showing “impatience, terror, self-discovery, self-doubt, pain,

vulnerability, role-playing, and a sense of immortality, all

of which converge.” (Mann, 1992: Inside-cover) Her photographs

show the child’s development representing “a childhood idyll

beset by implied dangers and adult glances.” (Narrator, BBC,

2007) Mann’s photography has transgressed this line and she

has taken “her children out of the realm of childhood and

insert[ed] them into the melodrama of adulthood.” (DiPrete,

2006: 373) She counter-argues that her photographs “reflect

her astonishment, the amazement and pure beauty children

bring,” (Vile Bodies, 1998) and DiPrete confirms that in Candy

Cigarette the children “acted out their beauty, playfulness,

fears, and sensuality.” (2006: 23) The dream-like aesthetic is


reinforced by the blurred background and Steward remarks that

“the nuances of light […] play on issues of memory, so that

the images of children at play […] recall […] an earlier

time.” (2000: 367-368) This portrays how children develop

quickly and progress through adolescence: Mann captures this

transformation.

Steward presents us with Anne Bernays argument that the

manipulation and freedom of sexuality in Mann’s photos “seem

to out-Freud Freud in acknowledging the pervasiveness of

childhood sexuality.” (ibid: 369) Bernays also argues that the

photographs show children’s “innocence as a sham” (ibid) but

informs us that the innocence of the children is still very

much present. One adds that innocence fades as they age,

transforming into adolescents and transcending into adulthood.

Mann shows how children progress and educate themselves by

what they see around them. Parsons notes that before

publishing Immediate Family, Mann “consulted a Federal prosecutor

in Virginia who advised her that some of the images being

exhibited could result in her arrest;” (ibid: 126) so

postponed the publishing. Mann’s daughter Jessie, (now an

adult) stated in a Channel Four documentary, that it was the


public hurting them with their thoughts and opinions due to

their interpretation of the images, not their mother’s. Mann

is mostly “rightly saluted for defying those who only see

sexual exploitation in photographs of children’s naturalness;

she has never denied the complexities involved.” (Steward,

2010: 1) She has had a profound impact on the receiver and

many are haunted, disturbed or even sinisterly hypnotised by

the power Mann’s photographs have to really show the truth of

childhood, capturing it in a moment. Jessie’s pose in Candy

Cigarette has a seductive model connotation, slouched to the

side, cigarette in hand daintily slanted fingers gently folded

in. Jessie Mann did not retreat from the world of modelling

when she grew up but embraced it becoming an “accomplished and

enthusiastic model.” (Parsons, 2008: 135) She collaborated

with portrait photographer Len Prince over a five year period

to produce Self-possessed. When viewing Princes photograph titled

Plate 37 (Fig. 3), we can see the visual connotations of her

earlier involvement with Candy Cigarette; mirroring “Jessie’s

earlier ‘come hither’ look of ‘Candy Cigarette’ with an

emboldened Marilyn Monroe in the midst of a soft porn shoot.”

(ibid: 136) Jesse is seen here showing the improved


“unselfconsciousness she demonstrated in her mother’s

photographs [and it] is on full display in [Plate 37].” (ibid)

Jessie accompanied her mother to many photo-shoots including At

Twelve so she became aware of the adult poses and the model

stance; observing the seductive pose we see in Candy Cigarette.

DiPrete argues that “the critics’ language discloses the power

of Mann’s photographs over the viewer in terms of physical

violation.” (2006: 24) James Christen Steward suggests that

“it is her black-and-white photographs of children […] that

have struck a vein.” (2000: 365)

Marianne Hirsch observes that Mann’s photography “is not

a childhood glimpsed but a childhood invented – one that is

performed and theatricalized […] a fictitiously mimetic space

of possibility and illusion.” (1997: 152) DiPrete contends

that “Mann exploits the tropological resources of her visual

language to allow for a free play between literal and

figurative planes.” (2006: 26) Although Mann’s photograph Candy

Cigarette pictures a smoking child slouched in the seductive

style of a young adult. The connotations of childhood sweets –

candy-sticks – are associated with the word ‘candy’ (also used

as a pretend cigarette during role-play games.) This shows us


the child-at-play; acting out what she has seen, experienced

and observed. Steward argues that Candy Cigarette portrays Jessie

“mimicking an adult smoking a (sweet) candy cigarette [and]

has Lolita connotations but is also universal and typical of

how girls play and pose.” (2010: 1) The idea of the natural

child-at-play is subsequently positioned in place of the

Lolita connotations to provide a more neutral meaning. Mann’s

photographs have the power to create an uncomfortable space in

which the human mind is haunted by fears, loss, helplessness

and the past: therefore demanding a response from one’s

position in society. The key term of the linguistic sign would

be the adjective ‘candy’ and it re-categorises its denotative

visual sign the ‘cigarette’ as being a harmless sweet which

“depends heavily on cultural knowledge.”(ibid: 28) In the

western world candy-sticks are boxed sweets which are

cylindrical and about the size of a cigarette. By implementing

this cultural knowledge one is able neutralise the photographs

punctum, “therefore, the title encourages a conventionally

accepted and codified meaning, reassuring and unproblematic.”

(ibid) If we did not have this title to guide us or this

system of signification then the photograph on its own becomes


ambiguous. The title creates an anchor in order to direct the

receiver to view the image in a certain way: to limit the

photographs possible meanings “for a socially reassuring and

comforting explanation.” (ibid: 29)

A number of signs we can recognise at first glance are

the girl’s stances: Virginia with her back to us with her

hands on her hips watching Emmett on stilts in the background;

her hair tied-up and tidy. Then Jessie, is slouched just off-

centre to the left of the picture looking straight at the

receiver with, some might say, a seductive or sensual ‘look’

so often seen by models. Steward argues that it shows “Jessie

clearly vamping for the camera,” (2000: 373) holding a

cigarette-like stick in her hand. Her white dress contrasts

the darker background and manages to guide our view towards

her. Virginia is dressed in darker clothing so the attention

is not taken away from Jessie. The lighting on Jessie

highlights her blonde, messy hair and accentuates her face and

fingers holding the candy/cigarette. DiPrete states that “the

eye wanders freely from one to the other in the act of

reading. Then, when one quickly turns back to the title, the

gaze is directed once again to the elements selected in


advance.” (2006: 29-30) Jessie imitates what she has observed

previously and Steward argues that “such images play with the

knowingness of the viewer, and rush the children into the

adult world rather than allowing them to enjoy a separate

space for childhood.” (2000: 373) Bernays claims that Mann’s

photography implies a false moral connection between the

children and their mother. Steward discusses Bernays

declaration that “the most shocking aspect of Mann’s

photographs […] is the possibility of our sexual response to

them; we see these beautiful children, feel desire, and

immediately repress it.” (Quoted in Steward, 2000: 374) Mann

has a unique ability to use this tension to present extreme

acting-play in childhood seeking “to suggest that childhood is

a more complicated state than our society has historically

accepted.” (ibid) Steward expresses that child abuse is spoken

about obsessively and yet Mann’s photographs are given

negative press when her reasons behind the photography were,

now recognisably, justified and she achieved a representation

of the complicated process of transforming into an adult. Anne

Higonnet argues that “Mann signalled an important wider

representational shift from images of romanticized childhood,


dominant since the Victorian age, to the now pervasive modern,

‘knowing child’.” (1998: 133) This further leads one’s

investigation into one’s own ‘knowing’ of adolescence: the

rebel, tasting a cigarette for the first time with a sensual

look of seduction as her face invites you to transgress with

her and experience the darker and more inquisitive side of

childhood.

Mann’s work suggests that a redefinition of theworlds of childhood and adulthood, and theartificial lines drawn between them, is in order,that the much-discussed crisis of the […] familyis among other things a crisis of representation.

(Steward, 2000: 374)

Candy Cigarette shows us the ‘knowing’ child and in society today

children certainly are more ‘knowing’. DiPrete implores that

the “selective operation [which] alerts us to the iconic power

of the visual detail in its fixity and immobility,” (2006: 30)

ensures the receiver decodes the important elements in the

photograph – the candy and Jessie’s ‘look’.

Barthes argues in The Rhetoric of the Image, that “images […]

imply, underlying their signifiers, a ‘floating chain’ of

signifieds, the reader able to choose some and ignore

others.”(1977: 38-39) Barthes asserts that each image/sign


will have social/cultural connotations for the receiver to

interchange meaning. Mann’s choice of location, frame and

angle, lighting and props, gives us a sense of naturalness as

well as representing the child-at-play. DiPrete conveys that

the “structure of the photographic medium in its impact on the

viewer plays a crucial role in giving voice to the

psychosexual content of Mann’s images.” (2006: 40-41) one of

those images is Candy Cigarette. Barthes discusses denotation and

connotation and distinguishes a difference of innocence and

experience. He further reports that with an aesthetic view

“the denoted image can appear as a kind of [Eden/utopian-like]

state of the image; cleared utopianically of its connotations,

the image would become radically objective, or, […] innocent.”

(1977: 42) The process of denotation concerning the image or

photograph “naturalizes the symbolic message, it innocents the

semantic artifice of connotation, which is extremely dense.”

(ibid: 45) Candy Cigarette is ambiguous to the receiver and it

‘plays’ on both a literal and figurative level.

One argues that Candy Cigarette truly represents the

confusion in childhood and how children mirror and imitate us,

performing an identity, role-playing as an adult. Children


imitate mannerisms to learn how to be adults. Hirsch maintains

that Mann’s maternal look is subjective, “anxious, in awe of

their beauty, [identifying] with their freedom, urgent and

longing to capture something evanescent, fearful of her effect

on them.” (1997: 162) DiPrete further considers the maternal

‘look’ as “a power position that she inevitably exploits, […]

Mann at once awakens and resists the spectre of rigid

ideological superstructures.” (2006: 47) Candy Cigarette at first

glance breaks the sociocultural taboo of smoking, causing the

viewer an uneasy feeling about the photograph. Mann’s

photographs not only allow one to look into one’s own childhood

but it also portrays children’s developments. The photograph

allows us to see the paradox; the beauty and simultaneously the

dark side of the photograph. It shows how we could salvage

children’s innocence and beauty through photographs, ‘locking

in’ the moment. We hold children close; protecting them, until

the innocence is lost through adolescence and, as parents, must

let go. “Their strength and confidence, there to be seen in

their eyes, are compelling – for nothing is so seductive as a

gift casually possessed.” (Mann, 1992: 7) Rightfully concluding

that; “family life is, of course, as we all know, far more


complex than it is usually portrayed.” (Mann, BBC, 2007) Mann’s

ability to show a childhood lost has a profound and lasting

effect on the receiver.

Word Count: 3265


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Photographs

Mann, S, & Price, R. (1999) Immediate Family; Afterword by Reynolds

Price. London: Phaidon.

-Candy Cigarette: Taken in Virginia.

-The Wet Bed: Taken in Virginia.

Prince, L. (2003) Len Prince: Jessie Mann 'Self-Possessed' Exhibition – Plate

37. New York: Edwynn Houk Gallery.

http://www.houkgallery.com/exhibitions/2007-11-29_sally-mann/


Video and DVD Media

The Genius Of Photography [Videorecording] Part 5 – We Are Family. (2007) Tim

Kirby. UK: BBC (Viewed 10th December 2013.)

Vile Bodies [Video recording] Part 2 – Kids (1998) Edmund Coulthard. UK:

Channel 4. (Viewed 10th December 2013).


Images

Fig. 1. Jesse,Virginia andEmmett MannCandy Cigarette.

Photographs by Sally Mann. Taken from Immediate Family (1999)


Fig. 2. VirginiaMann The Wet Bed.

Photographs by Sally Mann.

Taken from Immediate Family (1999)


Fig. 3. Jessie Mann Plate 37. Photographs by Len Prince.

Taken from Self-Possessed (2003)

semiology and sally mann’s candy cigarette – a mother’s perspective on childhood

Documents