Immediate Family

Sally Mann’s seminal photography book Immediate Family (1992) depicts the artist’s three children (Emmett, Virginia, and Jessie) against the backdrop of her family’s remote farm in Lexington, Virginia. The cinematic, black-and-white photographs of Immediate Family have drawn controversy and acclaim for capturing the fleeting, unfettered, and vulnerable moments of childhood. “For years I shot the underappreciated and extraordinary domestic scenes of any mother’s life with the point-and-shoot,” she explained. In the series, Mann’s kids can be found smoking candy cigarettes, suffering from nosebleeds and insect bites, dancing naked on tabletops, and falling asleep in grassy fields. Photographs from Immediate Family are included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim Museum, among others. In 2018, Mann’s iconic Candy Cigarette (1989) broke the auction record for the series when a small-format print sold for $132,000.