About the Work
This photograph is part of a study on historical sites surrounding Virginia’s Blackwater River, a pre-Civil War entryway for fugitive slaves seeking emancipation. Sally Mann’s dreamy, lyrical image transforms the eerie abandoned woodland into a piece of poetry. In the dark, forgotten paradise of vegetation, a hint of light signals that hope may emerge from the sublime decay of the landscape.
Mann’s dramatic photograph of a complex landscape encompasses not only the natural history of the American South, but speaks also of the dark human history. Like her renowned portraits of children, this image retains the humanity and emotion for which Mann is celebrated.
About the Artist
Sally Mann has photographed portraits and landscapes in the American South since the 1970s. She pulls from a wide range of subjects, although her best known works feature her young children and her husband. She documented not only their ordinary lives, but also their intimate, naked moments – giving the familial pictures a sexual charge. Recently, Mann has turned her camera toward darker subjects such as suicide, decay and death, both in the natural world and in human life.
In 2001, Time Magazine nominated Mann as the "Photographer of the Year," a distinction that makes sense given the beauty and power of Mann's black and white photographs.
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