Sally Mann

American photographer, best known for photographs of her three children, often naked, dirty, or wounded, in poses that suggest their precocious sexuality. Her first widely recognized body of work, At Twelve (1988), similarly portrayed just‐pubescent girls. Later work explored landscapes of the American South, especially the Blue Ridge Mountains in south‐western Virginia where she was born, grew up, and lives.
Mann's black‐and‐white photographs are made with a large‐format view camera, and thoughtfully and skilfully printed. She has also worked in platinum, Polaroid, and Cibachrome. Her images are generally large and, issued in extremely limited editions, have enjoyed great success both critically and commercially.

In the late 1980s, the widely exhibited family photographs eventually published in Immediate Family (1992) and Still Time (1994) were attacked as perverse and exploitative, or praised as innocent and beautiful, depending on the political stance of the viewer.
Mann's landscape work is strongly influenced by pictorialism. Appearing less controlled and more flawed than the images of her children, the prints are purposely made with damaged lenses to exaggerate irregularities of focus and evoke historical photography. All her work has a literary character, and embodies nostalgia for innocence lost or under threat. She has also participated in group commission projects that reflect her values and interests, producing images of the Calakmul Biosphere in Mexico for the Nature Conservancy's Last Great Places exhibition (2001), and untitled images of windows made from the perspective of the dying for Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry (1996).

Sally Mann is very bold and I admire her for taking photos of her children as they are natural and beautiful. She also happens to play delightfully with light and shadow and depth of field to make the viewer see what she wants them to see. I also enjoy that her work involves her children, which I too try to envolve my children into my work. Her photos have a timeless look to them as those you are either looking at photos from long ago or photos taken last week. The photo of the child's head in the sand reminds my of paintngs that I have seen of the greek mythical creature Medusa.