Proud Flesh

For more than 40 years, Sally Mann (b. 1951) has made experimental, elegiac, and hauntingly beautiful photographs 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-portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and other studies-is that it is all "bred of a place," the American South. Mann, who is a native of Lexington, Virginia, uses her deep love of her homeland and her knowledge of its historically fraught heritage to ask powerful, provocative questions-about history, identity, race, and religion-that reverberate across geographic and national boundaries. Organized into five sections-Family, The Land, Last Measure, Abide with Me, and What Remains-and including many works not previously exhibited or published, Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings is a sweeping overview of Mann's artistic achievements.