Sally Mann: At Twelve, Portraits of Young Women (30th Anniversary Edition)

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a b c Sheets, Hilarie (September 6, 2016). "After Her Son's Death, Sally Mann Stages a Haunting Show". The New York Times . Retrieved July 27, 2017.

In the early 1990s, various political groups and the media were concerned about growing incidences of child pornography in society. It was in this context that Immediate Family was "delegitimized", in an act of what the sociologist Jeff Ferrell called "cultural criminalization". Pat Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting Network, for instance, protested that "selling photographs of children in their nakedness for profit is an exploitation of the parental role". Other members of the public wrote to Mann suggesting that her photographs would lead to her children suffering psychological trauma, and would likely result in at least one pedophile moving to Lexington and prowl the town's streets. a b c Woodward, Richard B. (September 27, 1992). "The Disturbing Photography of Sally Mann". The New York Times Magazine. p.29 . Retrieved November 6, 2023. Honorary Fellowships". Royal Photographic Society. Archived from the original on August 14, 2012 . Retrieved September 7, 2012.Mann's fourth book, Still Time, published in 1994, was based on the catalogue of a traveling exhibition that included more than 20 years of her photography. The 60 images included more photographs of her children, but also earlier landscapes with color and abstract photographs.

The fires in the Great Dismal Swamp seemed to epitomise the great fire of racial strife in America,” she writes. “The Civil War, emancipation, the Civil Rights Movement, in which my family was involved, the racial unrest of the late 1960s and most recently the summer of 2020.”For the next decade, her artistic focus became her children. The resulting series, titled Immediate Family published by Aperture in 1992, remains, three decades later, possibly her best-known work. Ginia Bellafante, " What Remains: The Life and Works of Sally Mann", The New York Times, January 31, 2007.

Within three months, the book sold out its printing of 10,000 copies. Mann’s children became ever more visible. While they enjoyed being photographed at the time, there was no telling how their opinions of the experience would develop. Mann recalls taking her children to a psychologist to assess the impact her series was having on them; he thought they were just fine. Mann uses antique view cameras from the early 1890s. These cameras have wooden frames, accordion-like bellows and long lenses made out of brass, now held together by tape that has mold growing inside. This sort of camera, when used with vintage lenses, softens the light, which makes the pictures timeless. [30] Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the densely forested swamp was used by slaves as a forbidding place to hide in when they attempted to escape the bondage of their owners. The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow described the swamp as "a place where hardly a human foot could pass, or a human heart would dare”. 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.

Sally Mann" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 14, 2017 . Retrieved November 7, 2023. Mann observed that it is rare for female artists to focus on the nude male form: "In taking these pictures, I joined the thinly populated group of women who have looked unflinchingly at men, and who frequently have been punished for doing so [...] I can think of numberless male artists, from Bonnard to Weston to Stieglitz, who have photographed their lovers and spouses, but I have trouble finding parallel examples among my sister photographers. The act of looking appraisingly at a man, studying his body and asking to photograph him, is a brazen venture for a woman; for a male photographer, these acts are commonplace, even expected". Throughout the 1960s, Mann attended the Ansel Adams Gallery’s Yosemite Workshops in Yosemite National Park, California and the Putney School and Bennington College, both in Vermont. She received a BA from Hollins College, Roanoke, Virginia, as well as an MA in creative writing. She gained her first solo museum exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, in 1977. In the early 2000s, Mann turned her attentions to the theme of death. For her 2001 "Body Farm" series, Mann had joined students at the University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Facility which housed a large fenced-off wooded area where recently deceased human remains - hence "Body Farm" - were placed in scenarios meant to replicate real homicide scenes. Many of Mann's "Body Farm" images appeared in her 2003 book, What Remains, which includes other images focused on the theme of death, including photographs taken in-and-around her own Lexington farmstead (such as the decomposing body of her pert greyhound, Eva). They have three children together: Emmett (born 1979), who died by suicide in 2016, after a life-threatening car collision and a subsequent battle with schizophrenia, and who for a time served in the Peace Corps; Jessie (born 1981), who herself is an artist; and Virginia (born 1985), a lawyer. [48]