Jackson Fine Art announced the premiere of previously unreleased photographs from Sally Mann’s series At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women, a collective portrait of twelve-year-olds on the verge of adulthood. The artist is renowned for her evocative work exploring themes of family, identity, and the American South. The portraits in this exhibition were taken by Mann between 1983-1985 with her large format camera in Rockbridge County, Virginia, the artist’s birthplace and where she continues to live and draw inspiration. She revisited her At Twelve archive last year, discovering unseen treasures, remarking: “One of the advantages of a long life is that you get to go back and revisit parts of your work that were overlooked, sometimes inexplicably, in early years.” We are honored to be able to present the exhibition in close collaboration with the artist and Gagosian. Jackson Fine Art has exhibited Mann’s work since 1996 and this the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition coincides with the reissue of the book At Twelve, published by Aperture in 1988.
Twelve is an age of expanding horizons, enriched by social experiences and shared connections. It is also a transitional period, navigating the delicate space between childhood and adulthood. The At Twelve portraits reveal this delicate balance, portraying both the innocence of youth and the yearning for maturity. The young women in these images are relatives and daughters of friends, but also, others in her small Virginia community who trusted the artist to capture their individual spirit with grace and honesty. Taken nearly forty years ago, these images continue to hold relevance today, bridging the past and present in their exploration of this transformative stage in a young woman’s life.
Born in Lexington, Virginia, Sally Mann began to study photography in the late 1960s, attending the Ansel Adams Gallery’s Yosemite Workshops in Yosemite National Park, California and the Putney School and Bennington College, both in Vermont. She received a BA from Hollins College, Roanoke, Virginia, in 1974, and an MA in creative writing the following year. At a moment when many other photographers were creating large-scale color prints, Mann looked to photography’s past, investigating the visual and metaphorical potential of employing nineteenth-century technologies. She has long used an 8 x 10 bellows camera and has explored platinum, bromoil, and wet-plate collodion processes for making prints.
Sally Mann : At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women
January 30 – March 29, 2025
Jackson Fine Art
3122 East Shadowlawn Ave. NE
Atlanta, GA 30305
www.jacksonfineart.com
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