In the early 2000s, Sally Mann continued to reflect on how slavery and segregation had left their mark on the landscape of Virginia and, in turn, shaped her own childhood. Abide with Me, a video featured in the exhibition, Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings, explores these entwined histories. This video is accompanied in gallery by Mann’s photographs which imagine the physical and spiritual pathways for African Americans in antebellum and post-Civil War Virginia: the rivers and swamps that were potential escape routes for enslaved individuals and the churches that promised safe harbor, communion, and spiritual deliverance. The presentation also includes photographs of Virginia Carter, the African American woman who had served as Mann’s primary caregiver. A defining and beloved presence in Mann's life, Carter taught Mann the profoundly complicated and charged nature of race relations in the South. The final component is a group of pictures of African American men rendered in large prints (50 x 40 inches) made from collodion negatives. Representing the artist’s desire to reach across "the seemingly untraversable chasm of race in the American South," this video frames these powerful photographs as Mann’s exploration of her own position in the fraught racial history of the region.
Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings is organized by the Peabody Essex Museum and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.