Fort Worth Police Seize Photos of Nude Children From Modern Art Museum

Thirty-three years after the publication of Sally Mann’s book of photographs Immediate Family, she is still chased by the same manufactured controversy attacking select photos of her children playing outside in the nude.

This time, however, the attacks on Mann’s work have escalated to police seizing her photographs off the walls of The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and an investigation by Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare. This follows an article by right-wing publication the Dallas Express claiming the photographs constituted “child pornography.”

Following the artwork’s removal, O’Hare, who's been investigated by ProPublica for pushing an increasingly far-right agenda in local politics, equated Mann’s work with “sexual exploitation of a minor” on Facebook.

Mann’s work was displayed as part of the Modern’s exhibition Diaries of Home, which seeks to explore the emotional nuance of home as both a physical place and concept. First published in 1992, the photos pulled from Immediate Family allow the viewer a small glimpse into Mann’s world as a mother of three children on the family's isolated farm in rural Virginia, where the kids occasionally ran naked in the privacy of the family’s property. That these photos would be seized as evidence of child pornography concerns Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Although he is not involved in the case, he says under its logic every parent with a bathtub photo of their children is a Facebook post away from federal prison.

“Nudity doesn’t automatically mean sexualized, and these photographs, you can find them within three seconds via Google on the Guggenheim or Smithsonian websites,” Steinbaugh says. “That’s not where you go to find child pornography.”

Established legal precedents for determining whether a given piece of media that portrays children can be considered pornographic or generally obscene include the Miller and Dost tests, which lay out three- and six-point criteria, respectively, for determining the sexual intent of subject matter and imagery.

Steinbaugh’s examination of Mann’s photographs finds they fail to meet the standards required for either pornographic or obscene material under these tests.

“This time this is beyond the pale,” he says. “Even if you apply a lesser standard with respect to sexualized photographs of children, these aren’t sexualized. It’s not actually suggestive setting. It’s not unnatural posing. There’s no suggestion of sexual coitus or availability here in the photographs or [the children’s] nudity alone.”

FIRE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to defending First Amendment rights largely on college campuses, has a history of defending artworks from attempted censorship. “If you were a police officer and you were being told to go into an art museum or gallery, that should give you second thoughts about whether or not you were complying with your obligations of the Constitution,” Steinbaugh says.

A fellow artist also on display in Diaries of Home is photographer and co-founder of Fort Worth’s Kinfolk House, Letitia Huckaby. She says she is disheartened that Mann’s photographs were seized because the Modern “went to great lengths” to inform the public that the exhibition included images perhaps not suitable for all audiences.

Huckaby, also a mother of three children, understands the artistic inclination to immortalize precious moments with her children in photographs, remembering her own overwhelming desire to document nursing her youngest child as she knew it would be the last time she nursed any of her children.

“I can only imagine the pain of having captured all these intimate images of your children, and then having lost a child, and those images being considered so controversial — what is precious and tender to you,” Huckaby says. “I feel empathy for [Mann] in this situation.”

In 2016, Mann suffered the loss of her eldest son, Emmett, to suicide. His photograph was among the images seized by police.

Huckaby, who is also a former photojournalist, sees media coverage that stirs up controversy such as this as a product of individual slants and agendas. The Dallas Express article initially covering the presence of nude images of children in the Modern’s exhibition claims the paper received a tip from a Fort Worth resident. The Express also took issue with the presence of queer identities and love portrayed in other artworks.

Kendall Smith Lake, director of communications at the Modern, wrote in an email to the Observer: “An inquiry has been made concerning four artworks in the temporary exhibition Diaries of Home. These have been widely published and exhibited for more than 30 years in leading cultural institutions across the country and around the world. The Museum is unable to comment further.”