Where does the impulse to create come from? What are the forces that shape an artist's work?
This ground-breaking memoir a unique interplay of narrative and image charts the making of
one of America's greatest artists. As Sally Mann tells her story her work's preoccupation with
family race mortality and the storied landscape of the American South is revealed as almost
genetically predetermined written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.
Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she
bargained for: "deceit and scandal alcohol domestic abuse car crashes bogeymen clandestine
affairs dearly loved and disputed family land . . . racial complications vast sums of money
made and lost the return of the prodigal son and maybe even bloody murder." In lyrical prose
and startlingly revealing photographs she crafts a totally original form of personal history
that has the page-turning drama of a great novel but is firmly rooted in the fertile soil of
her own experience. This is the record of an artist's life and a meditation on place people
family and the nature of creativity itself.
