When I personally learned of the artist’s work, I was naturally impressed by the raw and pristine imagery, but after seeing these films, I admit to falling in love with the humanity of this imaginative and tortured soul.

The first, Blood Ties: The Life and Work of Sally Mann (1994), was shot and produced during the furor over the exhibitions of her child nudes and the second, What Remains (2005), gives a much more comprehensive picture of her inspirations and body of work. Two films were produced about Sally, both directed by Steven Cantor. For the most part, Sally bares all in her book, but out of respect for one of her subjects who now has a prominent position in a major corporation, she did not reproduce it. One was The Family of Man (1955) and on only her second roll of film, she shot her first nudes in 1969, inspired by Wynn Bullock’s Child in Forest. Her father introduced her to the arts and she has fond memories of several books he shared with her. She took a serious interest in photography when at The Putney School in Vermont which her two brothers had attended before her. This kind of heritage would almost inevitably make Sally a fish out of water in social circles but impress upon her an appreciation for the land itself. Her father, a family physician from an established Texan family, was educated in the North where he met Sally’s mother. Sally Mann (neé Munger) was born in 1951 in Rockbridge County, Virginia.

The book is the kind of self-examination that would have made Socrates proud and an enviable genealogical legacy to her entire family. This post has been long in coming because of the nagging question: How will I ever do justice to this artist’s work? Finally, the release of Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs, published by Little, Brown and Co., this May forced my hand and convinced me that I could procrastinate no further. Mann’s challenging images of childhood and, by extension, motherhood have become ubiquitous.

Hold still sally mann summary