"The Two Virginias"
Sally Mann
Photographer Sally Mann reflects on the life of Virginia Franklin Carter (1894–1994), an African American woman who helped raise the artist and her two brothers in Lexington, Virginia. “My parents were important but Virginia may have been the single most important person in my life,” says Mann, who named her youngest daughter after Carter. They are pictured together in Mann’s series The Two Virginias. Mann interviewed Carter’s children for her 2015 memoir, Hold Still.
Mann writes: “Left with six children and a public education system for which she paid taxes but which forbade classes for black children beyond the seventh grade, Gee-Gee managed somehow to send each of them to out-of-state boarding schools and, ultimately, to college.” Featured in addition to The Two Virginias are images from Mann’s Deep South series and her photograph Virginia Asleep (1988).
Featured artists
About the artists
Sally Mann was born in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia, where she currently lives and works. She graduated from Hollins College where she received her BA in 1974 and her MA in 1975. Best known for her black-and-white photography, Mann looks to her surroundings for inspiration. Whether documenting the everyday activities of her children or the beauty of the American landscape, Mann’s photographs, ethereal and haunting, touch on themes of loss, intimacy, freedom, and innocence.
