Sally Mann

Sally Mann is an acclaimed American photographer known for her evocative and often controversial images that explore themes of family, memory, mortality and the Southern landscape. Through her lens, Mann has the uncanny ability to capture raw human emotions, making her images so captivating and enduring.

Born in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia, Mann was introduced to photography by her father, who encouraged her interest. She began taking photographs at the age of 16. Upon graduating from Hollins College, Mann worked as a photographer at Washington and Lee University and documented the construction of its new law school building in the mid-1970s. Her 1988 collection, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women, captured adolescence in its truest form, marking the genesis of the drama and brooding mood unique to Mann’s images.

Sally Mann created one of her most well-known series, Immediate Family, between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. An intimate portrayal of the bucolic upbringing of her three children, Emmett, Jessie and Virginia, on their woodland home in rural Virginia, the series was born in the literal sense when Mann decided to photograph the birth of her third child, Virginia.

The recognition of the complex characters of children is what gives Mann’s images of her own children a universal quality. Mann’s photographs show her children not only in the midst of childhood mishaps and play, but also capture them in moments of quiet contemplation and respite.

Throughout her career, Mann has continued to live and work in her hometown in Virginia, publishing photographs and writings on various themes — from biographical to the Southern landscape and Cy Twombly’s work and studio in Lexington. In 2001 she was named ‘America’s Best Photographer’ by Time magazine. Mann was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and was awarded Prix Pictet in 2021. Her works belong in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others.