Sally Mann is an American photographer who is famous for her monochrome photography. She first started photographing her children then transitioned into capturing decomposing subjects, representing death and decay. Sally Mann’s photograph, “Candy Cigarettes,” portrays the corruption of innocence as a somber and transformative developmental period in a child’s life by the setting and the many forms of juxtaposition.

One can easily identify the rural landscape in Mann’s landscape. The subjects are in a clearing, surrounded by trees that make up a forest. Behind the subjects there appears to be a wide dirt path that is bordered by grassland. The forest consumes most of the background yet shows a small portion of the sky in the upper right corner. The trees are portrayed as dark black which produces a gloomy and ominous feeling. There are three subjects in this image.  In focus and slightly off centered, there is a girl in a white ruffled dress with a cigarette in her hand, likely around the age of ten or eleven years old. Her body position is closed off, her light-colored hair slightly messy, and her facial expression is full of sorrow. Underneath her eyes appear to have bags below, exhibiting exhaustion and misery.  Posterior to the left of her and slightly blurred, there is a tall object with rungs that appears to be a type of playground equipment. Elevated on this object is a young male wearing long shorts, facing away from the camera. In the bottom left corner on the opposite side, there is a young girl wearing a dark colored dress composed of polka dotted fabric with ric rac bordering the sides and neckline. Her curly hair is in a ponytail and is messy, most likely the result of playing on the recreational structure. She is quite shorter and appears to be younger than the girl she is adjacent to. She has her hands on her hips and is turned towards the playground structure, watching the boy play.

This image captured by Mann is considered a type of monochrome photography, a photograph that has one hue, and is classified as this based on the image’s black and white color scheme. There are various reasons to why a photo is composed in black and white film, yet the time period of the photograph often determines this. Color photography was not popular until later in the twentieth century therefore older photographs are black and white. Mann photographed this image between the years 1970 and 1980. This is an estimate based upon the popularity of smoking, the fashion displayed, and the black and white photo. The dark colors in the image, both in the background and the unfocused subjects, also portrays uncertainty, melancholy, and despair. The young girl in this image who is smoking, is surrounded by this darkness. The white dress she is wearing contrasts the background and captures the viewers’ attention instantly, making her the focal point of the photo. The color of her dress represents innocence, goodness, purity, and safety. These are all things most children either have or are. 

This image portrays the corruption of innocence that is apparent during children’s developmental period and childhood. The main subject is a young, undeveloped girl who is by far way too young to be smoking a cigarette. Barely at the age of adolescence, she is preforming an adult like action that demonstrates her desire for adulthood. In this image, she is turned away from both the playing children and the path behind her, representing her abandonment of her childhood and her innocence. The wide dirt path behind her was once clear, it symbolized her future and the many wide spread opportunities that were available. When she turned her back on this path and followed the temptation, desire, and rebellion that cigarettes represent, the path became blurred. This is done in real life all the time, which is why this is the message Mann wanted to portray and capture in her photograph. Everyone has a personal path they are meant to follow yet freewill with the presence of temptation and desire can delay or reroute the progress of fulfilling that path. The young girl is experiencing this first hand, she chose to follow the one society called her to choose, full of bad decisions and temptation. As a result of her actions, her innocence and purity has been stripped away from her and everything her white dress previously stated about her is no longer accurate. Though she is technically still a child, she no longer has that childlike appearance. Children are often filled with and emit joy. Children are constantly smiling, laughing, and playing about. Yet in this image, her face is full of despair, sorrow, and an overall a sense of brokenness. Not only does her facial expressions exhibit nonverbal communication, her body language does as well. Her shoulders are slouched and her arm is extended across her body and folded underneath her other arm. These nonverbal communication signs are types of closed off body positions. This can represent many things; one option is that she may feel uncomfortable with her actions so she is seeking comfort within herself. She could also feel insecure, which is similar yet more broad. Or it could be the completely opposite, she might be extremely comfortable with herself and her actions and that is just a position of relaxation. 

As a result of this corruption, when viewers were initially shown this image, many were shocked and many emotions were triggered. First and foremost, the girl is far too young to be smoking. This created initial shock and many individuals were upset and frustrated to why someone at that age would be participating in such adult like actions. The girl looked hopeless and miserable, which also created an emotional pull. Many individuals sympathized with her. 

In the photograph, “Candy Cigarettes,” Mann uses the image of a young girl smoking a cigarette to portray the corruption of innocence of children in a transformative and developmental period of their life. She did so by examining the setting, the symbolic representations, the juxtapositions, the comparison of color, the emotional triggers, and the overall broad message portrayed in her photograph. 
