Sally Mann

Sally Turner Munger (Sally Mann) was the youngest of three children born to Robert Munger, a doctor who drove around Lexington, Virginia. Sally's primary maternal figure, however, was her nanny, an African-American woman named Virginia Carter who took day-to-day care of Sally and her siblings. She described her childhood, during which she usually played unclothed, as "'unconventional', 'rural' and 'near-feral'", adding that, we were "middle class but bohemian: no church, no country club, no television". Having inherited his love of photography, Sally would borrow her father's 5×7 camera (which may account for her preference for large format photography in her professional career). He also bought his daughter her first Leica (35mm hand-held) camera. In 1969, Sally graduated from the Putney School, a private boarding school in Vermont. While at Putney, she signed up to a photography module (though she later admitted that her primary motivation was to be able to be alone with her boyfrien