Sturges primarily works with a large 8x10-inch-format view camera. He has taken some digital photographs but prefers to work with film. [3]

Grand Jury Indicts Barnes & Noble for Books Depicting Nude Children". Los Angeles Times. February 19, 1998 . Retrieved February 19, 2013. When questioned regarding the prosecution, Sturges stated it would waste taxpayers' money, as the photographs "are not done flirtatiously" and have been displayed in major museums. [6] Sturges responded to the indictment labelling the books as "obscene material containing visual reproduction of persons under 17 years of age involved in obscene acts" by stating "This is pretty chilling language because, in fact, the people in my pictures are not engaged in any acts at all. They are living in contexts that are naturist, which is to say that when it's warm and people feel like it, they don't wear clothes", [7] also stating "To find the work obscene, you'd have to find homo sapiens between 1 and 17 inherently obscene, and I find that obscene." [5] In 2021, Sturges pled guilty in Franklin County (MA) Superior Court to an unnatural and lascivious act with a child under 16 when he was a dorm head at the Northfield Mount Hermon School in the mid-1970s. He was sentenced to three years' probation. [9] [10] [11] Publications [ edit ] Publications by Sturges [ edit ] Sterngold, James (September 20, 1998). "Censorship in the Age of Anything Goes; For Artistic Freedom, It's Not the Worst of Times". The New York Times . Retrieved February 17, 2013. Sturges was born in 1947 in New York. From 1966 to 1970, he served in the United States Navy as a Russian linguist. He graduated with a BFA in Perceptual psychology and Photography from Marlboro College and received an MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. [1] Career [ edit ]

Naked young people are only a part of his exploration of “a journey from child to adult” – a journey that takes many years to complete. “The better you know your models, the more likely you are to make a picture that is “true”, the artist said, “A single image could be arresting and interesting but unless it was followed by more work it seemed to pose more questions than answers for me”. Many of the subsequent images that eventually formed the “Immediate Family” series featured her children on the family farm—in the nude, injured, or in other vulnerable positions. Emmett’s bloody nose, Virginia’s wet bed, and Jessie’s naked dance on a table all became aesthetic fodder through their mother’s lens. In the pictures, their ages range from around one to twelve years old. Mann debuted the series at New York’s Houk Friedman Gallery (now Edwynn Houk Gallery) in the spring of 1992. Later that year, she published the images in a photo book of the same title.

Beem, Edgar Allen (January 3, 2008). "Catching Up with; The Way of All Flesh". Photo District News. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015 . Retrieved February 23, 2013. a b Boxer, Sarah (March 4, 1998). "Critic's Notebook; Arresting Images of Innocence (or Perhaps Guilt)". The New York Times . Retrieved February 17, 2013. In the early 1990s, photographer Sally Mann transformed one of the most banal elements of family life—the sentimental photo album—into discomfiting, divisive, and ultimately unforgettable artwork. For her series “Immediate Family,” she shot her three children (Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia) in vulnerable positions at their summer home in rural Virginia. The ensuing criticism the images received questioned the line between pornography and fine art and problematized the objectification of children.

A. D. Coleman gave a favourable review of the book in The New York Observer, stating: "Sturges sustains a delicate balance on a very precarious wire ... His struggle is to observe and render his subjects in all of their complexities, trembling on the cusp of change. The result of this long-term, communal effort is one of the most clear-eyed, responsible investigations of puberty and the emergence of sexuality in the medium's history, making a metaphor of the metamorphosis from child to adult." [2] Attempted censorship [ edit ] His photographs appear as cover art on three novels by Jennifer McMahon, Promise Not to Tell, Island of Lost Girls and Dismantled, as well as Karl Ove Knausgård's 1998 debut novel Ute av verden ( Out of the World). The band Ride used some of his photographs on different releases, i.e.: the Twisterella and Leave them All Behind EPs.