December 07, 2025

Sally Mann, photographer and writer

51 minutes

Sally Mann is a photographer and a New York Times bestselling writer. She is best known for making large-format black and white photographs of the people and places in her immediate surroundings: her children, her husband, and the rural landscape of her home state and the American South.

Sally was born in Lexington, Virginia, the youngest of three children to Robert and Elizabeth Munger. Her father was a doctor and gave Sally his old Leica camera to play with.

After university, she wanted to be a poet but she spent more than a decade as a commercial photographer while starting a family of her own and exhibiting her work on a small scale. She published her first book of photographs in 1984. That same year, she began taking pictures of her three children for a series called Immediate Family, which brought her both renown as well as infamy for touching on ordinary moments in their daily lives – playing, sleeping, and eating, sometimes while naked – but also speaking to larger themes such as death and cultural perceptions of childhood, rendering familiar subjects “both sublime and disquieting”.

In the mid-1990s, she began to move away from the family pictures in favour of photographing the landscape around her.

Much of Sally’s body of work comes from observing what is closest at hand because, she says, “The things that are close to you are the things that you can photograph the best.”

She has explored the identity of the American South, and her relationship with her place of origin, as well as mortality and decay, and the effects of muscular dystrophy on her husband. In her latest book, Art Work, she considers the challenges and pleasures of the creative process.

Sally continues to live on the 800-acre family farm near Lexington with her husband Larry and a number of dogs.

DISC ONE: Köln, January 24, 1975, Part I - Keith Jarrett

DISC TWO: Take This Hammer - Odetta

DISC THREE: Trustful Hands - The Dø

DISC FOUR: O Holy Night. Composed by Adolphe Adam and performed by Concert Choir of St Andrew’s School, Delaware and Virginia Mann (Soprano)

DISC FIVE: Moby Dick (an extract of Chapter 3) Written by Herman Melville and narrated by Frank Muller

DISC SIX: County Seat - Emmett Mann

DISC SEVEN: Vivaldi: Oboe Concerto in C major, RV 452: 2. Adagio. Performed by Heinz Holliger (Oboe), I Musici (Ensemble)

DISC EIGHT: You Are My Friend (Live) - Sylvester

BOOK CHOICE: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust

LUXURY ITEM: Paper and a pencil

CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: You Are My Friend (Live) - Sylvester

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Producer Sarah Taylor

Desert Island Discs has cast many photographers away over the years including Eve Arnold, Val Wilmer and Vanley Burke. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.

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By BBC Radio 4

4.7

14611,461 ratings