This is the stuff of which Greek dramas are made: impatience, terror, self-discovery, self-doubt, pain, vulnerability, role-playing and a sense of immortality, all of which converge in these astonishing photographs. With sublime dignity, acute wit and feral grace, Sally Mann’s pictures explore the eternal struggle between the child’s simultaneous dependence and quest for autonomy-the holding on and the breaking away. Taken against the Arcadian backdrop of her woodland summer home in Virginia, Sally Mann’s extraordinary, intimate photographs of her children reveal truths that embody the individuality of her own family yet ultimately take on a universal quality. First published in 1992, Immediate Family has been lauded by critics as one of the great photography books of our time, and among the most influential.
