Page 147 - Cultural Studies Volume 11
P. 147
COLLECTING LOSS 141
‘… Jessie holds the bright white pleated cotton skirt, sprinkled with flowers, out into a
wide smile for the camera…. I am charmed. But I am also haunted…by the torn
nightdress…’
Source Sally Mann, Easter Dress, 1986. Copyright © Sally Mann, courtesy of Houk
Friedman, New York.
convince myself that the loss tears at my body, not theirs. I try to console myself
with Barthes’ words on the pleasure of ‘abrasions’, the pleasure found in ‘the site
of loss, the seam, the cut, the deflation’. But one hole gives way to another tear. I
become acutely aware of my futile attempts to fill the holes with family albums
of perfect pictures. 35
