All about sex, culture, technology, art, politics,
ideas, drugs & rock & roll . . . but mostly sex

Sally Mann

Sally Mann was born in Lexington, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Today she still lives in Lexington with her husband and three children, Jessie, Emmet and Virginia, and her photography is steeped in the people and landscapes of the region. Mann shoots with a large-format 8x10 camera to create richly detailed, finegrained black-and-white images which blend a vaguely antiquarian look with an eerie intimacy. Mann says of her work, "When the good pictures come, we hope they tell truths, but truths 'told slant,' just as Emily Dickinson commanded."

Sally Mann earned both acclaim and notoriety with her second published collection, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women (1988). Those portraits captured the confusing emotions and developing sexual identities of girls at that transitional age, one foot still in childhood and one foot in the adult world. Her next collection, Immediate Family (1992), brought even more acclaim for its hauntingly beautiful tableaux, and even more notoriety for its nude shots of her own preadolescent children. Conservative critics called the images "child pornography" and further evidence of the art world's amoral decadence. Fortunately, these clueless condemnations haven't hurt her career. Her photographs appear in most major American art museums, and her travelling exhibitions have been in great demand. In her more recent work, Sally Mann has turned to unpopulated rural Virginia landscapes.

ARTICLES & REVIEWS

Noelle Oxenhandler looks at the family photography of Sally Mann for Nerve (1998). At the bottom of the page, click to read Sally Mann's response to the article.

A. D. Coleman surveys Sally Mann's career, including her recent turn away from childhood scenes to unpeopled landscapes. Excellent, thoughtful essay originally published in the New York Observer (1997).

David Levi Strauss reviews Sally Mann's recent landscape photography in ArtForum (February 1998).

Jordana Haspel reports on Sally Mann's 1997 talk at the Rhode Island School of Design. From the Brown Daily Herald (March 1997).

Sophia Coquillette reviews the Sally Mann exhibition at List Art Center. From the Brown Daily Herald (February 1997).

College student essay entitled "Adolescence and Art: The Photography of Sally Mann in At Twelve." Very slow-loading page with five photographs, well worth the wait.

Cari Marshall reviews Sally Mann's exhibition at Austin Museum of Art-Laguna Gloria, and salvages Mann's work from the sensationalism of conservative christian protests and civil libertarian defenses. From the Austin Chronicle (September 1998).

Austin Chronicle editor Louis Black responds to a reader complaint regarding a Sally Mann photograph that appeared in a previous issue. The reader considered the photograph to be child pornography; Black disgrees strongly, but in retrospect regrets being rude to the caller (October 1998).

Laura Bien reviews Sally Mann's disturbing, dreamlike images for the Ann Arbor Observer (June 2000).

Elsa Dorfman reviews Sally Mann's At Twelve for The Women's Review of Books (1989). Dorfman complains bizarrely that Mann's photographs look too much like Calvin Klein ads, when she'd prefer they look more like Esprit or Benetton ads.

Annie Rooney blasts Sally Mann as a softcore child pornographer and untalented hack in the College Hill Independent (February 1997).

David Velez reviews Sally Mann's 1997 talk at the Rhode Island School of Design. From the College Hill Independent (March 1997).