_Sally Mann

After graduating in the early 1970's Mann became a staff photographer for Washington and Lee University in her hometown. Her mother ran the university's book store. Her father was the leading physician in town. In the mid-1970s her boss, Frank Parsons, encouraged her to photograph the construction of Washington and Lee's new law school, Lewis Hall.

She first achieved prominence with one-woman exhibition in late 1977 at the Corcoran Galley of Art in Washington, D.C., showing mystical and surrealistic images she took of the construction of a new law building at Washington and Lee.
Mann's work has stimulated controversy beginning with her second published collection, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women (1988, above is one of those shots). To critics, these portraits "captured the confusing emotions and developing sexual identities of girls at that transitional age, one foot in childhood and one foot in the adult world.", but for many the photographs portray a child's innocence.

Her next collection was Immediate Family in 1992. These images gained notoriety for including nude photographs of her own children. Some critics called her work 'child pornography'. Her photographs continue to be shown in and collected by most major American art galleries and museums.