by Sally Mann
First published 2015
Acclaimed photographer Sally Mann opens boxes of family documents and discovers a cache of secrets that reshape her understanding of her own identity. The papers reveal domestic violence, financial ruin, extramarital relationships, disputed property, and possibly murder. Mann realizes her artistic obsessions with family dynamics, racial tensions, death, and Southern landscapes stem from patterns embedded in her bloodline. She weaves together personal narrative with her photographs to create an original form of autobiography. The book examines how family history shapes artistic vision and personal identity. Mann explores the complex racial dynamics of her Southern heritage while confronting uncomfortable truths about her ancestors. Through vivid prose and revealing images, she transforms family archaeology into compelling personal history that reads with the tension of fiction while remaining anchored in her lived experience.
Genres: family, literary-fiction, autobiography, biography-memoir, photography, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-identity, unreliable-narrator
Setting: South, Southern
Period: 20th-century
482 pages · Hardcover · Little, Brown and Company
Content warnings: domestic-violence