Sally Mann, photographer: “You couldn’t do what I did today, putting my children out there”
In the 1990s, controversy erupted over her portraits of her naked children. Years later, she won a Prix Pictet and received the award for best American photographer. A retrospective in San Sebastián revisits her entire work.
Sally Mann, a photographer, began taking photographs at the age of 17 and soon realized she wanted to make it her profession. After completing her university studies at Bennington, she moved back to Virginia, where she later married her fiancé. They continue to live on the same farm that her father, a rural physician, purchased.
Mann remains married to her husband, Larry Mann, and her photography career has been marked by accolades and awards, solidifying her status as one of the prominent photographers of the last half-century. Despite facing controversy since publishing her project "Immediate Family" featuring her three children in the countryside, Mann has remained undeterred.
The project placed her at the center of cultural wars in the United States during the 1990s due to the children's nude appearances in some of the photos, a debate that has resurfaced, demonstrating that in 2025, the photographs of Mann's children were removed by agents from the walls of a museum in Fort Worth. One of her sons, Emmett, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and took his own life in 2016.
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