Sally Mann

Sally Mann was born in Lexington, Virginia in 1951.  She took up photography at Putney School, from which graduated in 1969. Later she received her BA and MA from Hollins College in creative writing. She has one many awards including NEA, NEH, and Guggenheim Foundation grants.

Mann is best known for her controversial series Immediate Family. The series consists of 65 black and white photographs of her three children. They were all younger than ten. The images were of the children doing normal kid stuff. Some did touch on the subjects insecurity, loneliness, injury, sexuality and death. As such some of her children are photographed in the nude. This caused considerable backlash. People thought it was exploitive and child porn. Mann countered, “natural through the eyes of a mother, since she has seen her children in every state: happy, sad, playful, sick, bloodied, angry and even naked.”

Personally I like her Southern Landscape series the best. It was a change for the photographer. I am always drawn to landscapes, but have been into black and white landscapes recently. Hers are like no other photographers. They look like something happened to the camera or film, so that the viewer is only allowed to see part of the image. Therefore we are only getting part of the story. I am entranced by this partial landscape.