Sally mann is one of American's most renowned photographers, she was born on 1 May 1951 in Lexington. She was introduced to photography by her father, who was passionate about photography, and he photographed her nude as a girl. She started studying photography since teenagers years and then, she spent two years at Bennington College, where she met Norman Sieff and her future husband, Larry Man. In 1974 she took a degree from Hollins University. 

She has remained most interested in black and white, especially photography’s antique technology. She has long used an 8x10 inch view camera, and has explored platinum and bromoil printing processes. She started her career as a photographer, with her first task ''At Twelve'': portrait of young women, in this project the main character were 12 year old girls. Another series is “Dream Sequence,” where she tried to explore the relationships studying its psychology.

After she was focused on her family life, with the series named ''Immediate family''. In this work Mann concentrated her attentions to her three children, those photos show ordinary moment in her family live. This work put Mann in a controversial situation, ''Immediate family'' was largely criticized because the photos were found disturbing, in fact them frequently showed her children nude, and in situations which can be badly interpreted. Some critics pointed Sally Mann's photos as a child pornography; but for her were just images which constituted an honest exploration of the complexities of childhood. For justify her art at the beginning of her book ''Immediate family she write:''many of these pictures are intimate…but most are of ordinary things every mother has seen. I take pictures when they are bloodied or sick or naked or angry''. Then she turns her camera onto Georgia and Virginia's landscapes , she produced two project: ''Deep South'' and ''Mother Land''. Then with her task ''what Remains'' she concern the death and the decomposition of the human body. Mann's photography was also focused on the progression of her husband’s muscular dystrophy (diagnosed in 1997) in ''Proud Flesh'' the images show a man (Larry Mann) at his most vulnerable moment.

And at last at the Houk Gallery in 2003 Sally Mann show the project ''Last Measure'', with this series of images on the battlefield of Civil war she wanted to meditate on the relationship with the earth to mortality.

 

 

Sally Mann was seduced since ever by visual aesthetics, she wanted always make a beautiful photos. She use to said that inside each photo we can read a lot of information and she defined her photos as a poem with a meaning to transmit, and for her the most important things are the emotions. Some critics described her work concern just sex ,death and whimsy but her photography is not just this, she wanted through her work ''invoke and illuminated the most difficult truth''. She trying to explore the layers of truth. In Mann's books we see also that she always focused her photography on the South of the United States. She did a continuous exploration into the mystery and complexity of the southern region and for that reason she often define herself as a Southern artist. 

She even romantic because she is more interested in the feelings that in the facts ''the facts don't have absolutely sharp, I can get information across by appealing to the viewer's emotions''.She tried in fact to hold on to a paradise that is inevitably lost. In conclusion for explain her photography, she thinks that the mission of the artists should be express their intellectual curiosity. Sally Mann for her art brokes the taboos thinking her best pictures come when she pushed herself out to the comfortable zone.

 

From an interview:

 

''As artists, we have the obligation to do so, because we have the gift to see things differently from other people. If the world we present to the viewers can challenge them, provoke them, and even change their situation, so much the better. And if it is beautiful at the same time, that’s icing on the cake. That’s my own mandate: to make beautiful art that also is about something. I want to make the ordinary resonate for my viewers in a universal way.''