Don’t let critics censor Fort Worth photo exhibit because they see iniquity, not art | Opinion

Sally Mann, once named “America’s best photographer” by Time magazine, is famous for artful photographs of her children frolicking around their Lexington, Virginia, home — sometimes in the nude.

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but as someone who visited the exhibit, I can attest that none of the photos are sexual. You used to be able to see them for yourself at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s “Diaries of Home” exhibit until police reportedly seized them as part of a child pornography investigation.

Most everyone reading this can easily make a distinction between going to a museum and opening Pornhub. You can gaze at Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam or the Statue of David without hiding yourself in shame over lusting after someone other than your spouse. You can calmly observe, admire or even critique pictures of those old-timey fat, cherubic baby angels without Photoshopping a chastity belt.

You can perform these basic acts of reasoning because you’ve grown up! And in the process of growing up, you learned some things about art, bodies, sex, youth and, ultimately, yourself.

If only we had a few more adults in the room.

Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare said Mann’s photos “should be taken down immediately and investigated by law enforcement for any and all potential criminal violations,” which they soon were. Bo French, leader of the Tarrant County Republican Party, warned our city that “if you’re not also focused on upholding moral standards, this kind of degeneracy creeps in,” claiming “our wonderful museums should be promoting excellence instead of radical perversion.”

Mercy Culture Church Pastor Heather Schott — fresh off bullying the city into signing off on a misguided and dangerous anti-sex trafficking shelter the church is calling the Justice Residences — launched a new social media campaign instructing people to pester the museum’s employees until they removed Mann’s work.

None of this is new for Mann. Or for anyone paying attention.

The 1994 Oscar-nominated documentary “Blood Ties: The Life And Work of Sally Mann” examines Mann’s work and its controversy, especially the nudes. It includes interviews with Mann, her kids, admirers and critics. You trace the echoes of its debate on artistic expression into our moment by watching the documentary on Apple TV+. (Unfortunately, I can no longer promise you that the police won’t rappel down the outside of your home, bash through your window and seize your hard drive. So, stream at your own risk.)

In the film, the late televangelist Pat Robertson compared Mann’s work to “[taking] a young girl, as they do in certain societies, and [selling them] into slavery.” Meanwhile, child psychologist Dr. Aaron Esman, interviewed for the film, said that from his view, the photos “don’t seem to me to be terribly erotically stimulating to anybody but a case-hardened pedophile.”

“Or,” he added, “a rather dogmatic religious fundamentalist. I can’t imagine anybody else being sexually turned on by those photographs.”

Let’s be kind and assume Esman’s more generous read of Mann’s critics — that their religious fundamentalism leads them to interpret all nudity as erotic. Fundamental to their fundamentalism is an inability to discern the meaning of anything they see.

Robertson, who died in 2023, was notorious for eluding the actual cause of catastrophic events, blaming the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haiti earthquake on gays, abortions, feminists, Haitian slave rebellions, witchcraft and whatever conspiracy seeped into the chasm between his ears. To nobody’s surprise, Robertson, was also unable to comprehend the difference between visual art and sex trafficking, making him an excellent candidate to run The Justice Residences.

French carries Robertson’s presence too. Denying the actual cause for this weeks historically intense fires devastating Los Angeles — a warming and water-parched region exacerbated by human-induced climate change — French instead attacked the existence of women firefighters from the safe distance of his social media apps, thousands of miles away. While those ladies fight fires, French shadow boxes with his keyboard.

Art patrons, First Amendment believers, and grown-ups everywhere can at least be encouraged that accusations from unserious people reveal nothing crass about your values and everything broken about their brains.

I don’t fear Mann’s influence on children. But I’m annoyed with the kind of people who prove they can’t be trusted to make any decisions for anybody of any age. I’m concerned about these people wresting control of how our schools teach, which books our libraries can promote, and now, what artwork belongs in museums. I believe the end goal is conforming children and adults into a graven image of themselves: middle-aged cowards who shriek and shrivel at the world from the void of their own insecurities. Their crusade won’t end with Mann, The Modern, or even with Fort Worth because insecure cowards will never satiate their fears.

Some visit art museums because they’re intrigued by the avant-garde, provoked by differing perspectives, and inspired by fresh experiences — even when they don’t reflect their own. Others, upon drifting towards those horizons, scramble backward, fearing they’ll plunge from the earth’s edge. And they’ll punish anyone for telling them there’s plenty more ahead.

Unfortunately, whether formally elected like O’Hare or informally endowed like Schott, Fort Worth’s leaders remind us of what kind of people they are. We should remember what they told us.

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