Sally Mann

For more than four decades, Sally Mann has made experimental, elegiac, and hauntingly beautiful photographe that explore the overarching themes of existence : memory, desire, death, the bonds of family, and nature's magisterial indifference to human endeavor. What unites this broad body of work—including figure studies, landscapes, and architectural views—is that it is all bred of a place, the American South. Fully immersed in its literary and visual culture, Mann— a native of Lexington, Virginia— has long written about what it means to live in the South and to be identified as a southerner. Using her deep love of her homeland and her knowledge of its fraught heritage, she asks powerful, provocative questions—about history, identity, race, and religion—that reverberate across geographic and national boundaries. Presenting essays both personal and scholarly, this richly illustrated monograph constitutes an in-depth exploration of the evolution of Mann's art, with more than one hundred photographs, including several previously unpublished ones. Sally Mann : A Thousand Crossings considers how Mann's relationship with her native land has shaped her work and how the legacy of the South—as both homeland and graveyard, refuge and battleground — continues to inform American identity and experience.