Sally Mann’s Art Work: Finding Beauty in the Broken

Sally Mann has always fascinated me. She’s one of those artists who never feels safe or easy, and maybe that’s why her work stays with me. For decades, she’s been celebrated and criticised in equal measure, admired for her bravery and questioned for her choices. Her photographs aren’t neat. They’re not flawless. They’re messy, raw, sometimes even unsettling. And to me, that’s where the beauty is.

Her new book, Art Work, reminds me why I keep returning to her. It’s not just a collection of photographs; it’s almost a manifesto for embracing imperfection. Mann has never hidden the scratches, the damaged plates, the chemical accidents. She leans into them, making them part of the story. What most of us might discard as ruined, she treasures as proof of life. I connect with that deeply through my own analogue photography.

Film has a way of reminding you that you’re not in total control. A light leak, a frame overlap, or a chemical stain in the developer - these “mistakes” often end up being the images I value most. They feel alive in a way that the perfect, technically pristine photo never does. Mann understood that long before most of us dared to admit it.

Of course, she’s no stranger to controversy. Her series of photographs of her children sparked fierce debates around privacy, art, and responsibility. Critics accused her of going too far. But Mann has always argued that photography should make us confront the things we’d rather turn away from. Whether you agree or not, you can’t ignore the courage it takes to stand by that vision.

Reading Art Work, I kept circling back to this idea: beauty doesn’t live in the polished, the flawless, the easy. It’s in the grit, the cracks, the accidents. It’s in the images that feel like they could fall apart at any second, because that’s where life really is.

Her work reminds me, over and over again, that imperfection isn’t failure. It’s essential. And maybe that’s the greatest gift she offers: permission to embrace the mess, to see it not as something to fix but as something worth celebrating.