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.

Sally Mann is a celebrated American artist and the author of several critically acclaimed books of photography, as well as the memoir Hold Still, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She still lives in Lexington.   Sarah Greenough and Sarah Kennel are curators at the National Gallery of Art and the Peabody Essex Museum, respectively, and cocurators of the Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings exhibition.