There are some books that arrive with a quiet insistence, demanding to be seen not merely with the eyes, but with something deeper in the gut. Sally Mann’s At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women for Aperture is precisely such a book. For a father like me, with a daughter now grown to twenty-four, and a youngest son who only last week turned twelve, this collection of photographs hits with a visceral force that resonates profoundly with my own memories and my present reality. It does not sanitise that tender, precarious age, it does not romanticise girlhood. Instead, it presents it with an unflinching eye messy, tangled, aching with something just out of reach.

I recall the way my daughter, at twelve, used to look at the world, hopeful, unsure, sometimes fire bright, sometimes intensely vulnerable. Seeing Mann’s work now, particularly through the lens of having that just now I am walking through that transitional year with my son, stirs a tempest of questions within me. How do we, as adults, truly photograph children? How do we interpret those images, and where does the line lie between honest representation and something that verges on voyeurism, perhaps even something more troubling?Mann’s oeuvre has always courted controversy, not least because she captures these girls in that narrow, volatile space between childhood innocence and burgeoning self-awareness. It makes me feel almost fiercely protective. Sometimes, it makes me feel angry. I have spoken before on how I feel about children being used to be provocative in photography.

The vulnerability is palpable within these frames, the early, and often unwanted, awareness of how they are seen, the strange, beautiful blooming of independence clashing with the oppressive weight of societal pressure. My wife often spoken to me of the comments young girls endure when our daughter was young and this age, the catcalls, the way they are over sexualised by some grown men. All of that, every unsettling truth, is captured here in these young faces, in their postures, in their steady, disconcerting gazes that meet yours across the decades.

As someone who tries to see the world through the discerning eye of a photographer, someone who likes to think they have a grasp on understanding visual language and the profound weight an image can carry I also find myself admiring how utterly masterful Mann is in her craft. Her compositions are so alive they feel still warm, as if the moment was only just plucked from the relentless march of time, perfectly made by that formidable 8-by-10-inch view camera. The prints in this reissue, made from new scans, have a quality that truly honours the original vision, bringing every nuance of light and shadow, every flicker of expression, right to the surface.

So yes, I find At Twelve profoundly uncomfortable. But not because it is necessarily inappropriate. It is uncomfortable because it is truthful, unsettlingly so. It is a mirror reflecting not only the girls within the frames but also, as Ann Beattie so perceptively notes in her introduction, ourselves. We are their mirror, they are ours. It challenges our presumptions of childhood purity and forces us to confront the complexities of vulnerability, agency, and the gaze.

This is not the first time I have met the works from At Twelve, certain images have haunted the periphery of my visual memory for years. Yet, this is the first time I have sat down with the book, allowing its pages to turn slowly, absorbing it for the profound work of art it is meant to be. And in doing so, I feel I have seen more, understood more. In my mind, I had recollections of images from this series that do not appear in this specific edition, which makes me wonder if perhaps I am conflating memories or if there are indeed photographs from this extensive body of work that I have encountered elsewhere. This new edition feels complete in itself, however, offering a powerful, cohesive narrative.

There is an image on pages eighteen and nineteen that has stayed with me. It shows a young girl in what looks like a baseball strip, holding a bat, posing against a brick wall. There is a small white graffiti man drawn on the wall, almost a silent witness to her moment. The girl has the bat behind her head, her eyes closed in an expression that feels both contemplative and utterly self-contained. I find myself wondering what thoughts are swirling in her mind in that captured instant. The tone of the image, like all of Mann’s work, is phenomenal, the light, the texture of the brick, the subtle curve of her arm it all speaks volumes about the meticulous care taken.

Then there is the photograph on page thirty-seven, which has a story so stark it chills me. It depicts a girl bent over, leaning through a rope swing, with a dog lying on the grass beside her. The accompanying text reveals, “showing me how her mother’s boyfriend pretended to hang himself out in the back yards.” It is truly mental to think about what this young girl might have had to internalise, what dark experiences shaped her reality. This kind of raw, unsettling context often goes with Mann’s portraits, forcing the viewer to confront the hidden struggles behind seemingly ordinary scenes.

On page fifty-one, there is another image that deeply disturbs and fascinates me. It shows a girl leaning with her arm over a man, who is leaning against a wall, smoking, wearing a rather dirty t-shirt. Her young eyes seem to have seen too much, carrying a weight that belies her age. The accompanying text from Mann’s notes confirms a chilling backstory, “This child was distinctly reluctant to stand closer to her mother’s boyfriend. This seemed strange to me, as it was their peculiar familiarity that had provoked this photograph in the first place… Several months later her mother shot him in the face with a .22.” Reading that, a sharp chill runs through me, the full sickening realisation of what this child had to endure, what she was already carrying, becomes painfully clear. It is a stark reminder that these are not mere poses, they are glimpses into lived, often traumatic, realities.

Perhaps most haunting for me is the image on page fifty-two, depicting a girl standing in the doorway of her garden playhouse. She appears almost too old, too tall for it, suggesting she might not fit on its tiny chairs anymore, or soon will not. But it is what lurks in the doorway behind her that truly grips you, a man, ostensibly her father, wearing a suit, his face obscured by the shadow and the structure of the playhouse. He has his arm over her front, with a subtle yet firm grip on her bicep. As a father, you naturally do not want to assume or project stories onto such an image, but this composition, the obscured adult figure, the sense of confinement within the playhouse, makes you deeply wonder about what she, too, had to go through, about the unspoken dynamics at play.

At Twelve forces us to consider the often unseen burdens young girls shoulder, the moments where innocence collides with an awareness of a world that is far from simple. Mann does not shy away from depicting the harsh realities some of these girls faced, acknowledging the “destitution, abuse, unwanted pregnancy” that can mark this vulnerable age. Yet, as the publishers note, these young women “return the viewer’s gaze with a disturbing equanimity,” embodying a quiet strength despite their circumstances.

This is a book that demands careful attention, a slow, deliberate turning of pages, allowing each portrait and its accompanying text to settle within you. It is a testament to Sally Mann’s uncompromising vision and her ability to capture fleeting, yet eternally resonant, moments of truth. It is a difficult, beautiful, and profoundly important work, one that will certainly stay with me for a very long time, continuing to stir questions and prompt reflection on the complex passage from girlhood to womanhood.

Regards

Alex