A memoir and family history from acclaimed photographer Sally Mann. Her luminous photographs have become icons of modern art, but Mann also possesses a fearlessness and clarity of vision in her writing as well. As she sets out to understand her parents, Mann unravels threads that lead to discoveries about generations past, the marks they made on the world, and how these reverberate in her life and work today. "In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her. Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: "deceit and scandal, alcohol, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land...racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder." In lyrical prose and startlingly revealing photographs, she crafts a totally original form of personal history that has the page-turning drama of a great novel but is firmly rooted in the fertile soil of her own life." -- Publisher's description.

Prologue: The Meuse -- Family ties: the importance of place. The sight of my eye ; All the pretty horses ; The bending arc ; The family of Mann ; The remove ; Our farm, and the photographs I took there ; Hold still ; Ubi amor, ibi oculus est -- My mother: memory of a memory past. A sentimental welshman ; Uncle Skip and the little dears ; The southern landscape -- Gee-Gee: the matter of race. The many questions ; Hamoo ; Smothers ; The kid on the road ; Who wants to talk about slavery? -- My father: against the current of desire. The munger system ; Leaving Dallas ; Mr. death and his blue-eyed boy ; World traveler, interesting gent ; The cradle and the grave ; Bearing witness ; The sublime end ; The x above my head -- Postscript: Exhibit A, Exhibit B.