News / Announcements

Sally Mann will receive a Lucie Award for achievement in fine art at the gala ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York on October 25, 2022. The Lucie Awards were launched in 2003 as part of the Lucie Foundation’s mission to honor master photographers, discover and cultivate emerging talent, and promote the appreciation of photography worldwide.

Sally Mann is the winner of the ninth cycle of the Prix Pictet, which aims to harness the power of photography to draw global attention to issues of sustainability, particularly concerning the environment. The thematic focus of this award cycle is “fire.” Mann has been recognized for her Blackwater series (2008–12), a multifaceted exploration of the Great Dismal Swamp, which spans the border of Virginia and North Carolina. Viewed by the artist as “a vessel for the memories of the complex struggles enacted upon it,” the swamp was long a treacherous refuge for people escaping slavery, and had been devastated by wildfires by the time Mann photographed it. The award ceremony took place at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on December 15, 2021, in advance of the opening of an exhibition at the museum showcasing the twelve photographic series shortlisted for the prize.

November 17–23, 2021

Sally Mann is known for her photographs of intimate and familiar subjects rendered both sublime and disquieting. Her projects explore the complexities of familial relationships, social realities, and the passage of time, capturing tensions between nature, history, and memory. Central to Mann’s investigation are the landscapes that she has photographed both near her home in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and across the South for over three decades. Often using a view camera, Mann draws on the history of both her medium and the Southern landscape to produce photographs that are expressive and elegiac.