At Twelve. Portraits of Young Women [SIGNED]

New York: Aperture / A New Images Book, 1988. First edition. Hardcover. Good+ to fine condition. Signed Sally Mann on title page. Quarto. 53 (1)pp. Original gray cloth with black lettering on spine in original photo-illustrated dustjacket, black lettering on spine. Gray endpapers. Frontispiece photograph. "At Twelve is Sally Mann's revealing, collective portrait of twelve-year-old girls on the verge of adulthood. To be young and female in America is a time of tremendous excitement and social possibilities; it is a trying time as well, caught between childhood and adulthood, when the difference is not entirely understood. As Ann Beattie writes in her (truncated) perceptive introduction, "These girls still exist in an innocent world in which a pose is only a pose–what adults make of that pose may be the issue." The consequences of this misunderstanding can be real: destitution, abuse, unwanted pregnancy. Mann does not deny this reality, but records it, both in the faces of her subjects and in written stories that accompany thirteen of the portraits, adding another dimension to our understanding of "Childhood. The young women in Mann's unflinching, large-format photographs, however, are not victims. They return the viewer's gaze with a disturbing equanimity." (Publisher). Illustrated with thirty-seven striking photographs. Dustjacket with light wear along edges and lightly rubbed. Binding with very light wear along edges. Endpapers with minor sunning along edges. Interior in fine condition. (Inventory #: 49356)