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[Sally Mann: "The Two Virginias"]

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My parents couldn't agree on where to live.

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My mother found the South unbearable.

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[May 11, 2000][br]Well, they went to New Orleans

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[May 11, 2000][br]as soon as they were married,

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[May 11, 2000][br]and she was miserable.

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She was 98 pounds.

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She was sleeping on the floor in a sweat.

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She was living off Coca-Colas.

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So they just looked at a map,

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and they split the difference between New[br]Orleans--

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where my father was in heaven--

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and Boston, and found Charlottesville,

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and then they found Lexington.

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And then they found this farm.

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[Lexington, Virginia]

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There are a number of things that[br]set Southern artists apart

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from anyone else.

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Their love of the past

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and their susceptibility to myth.

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And their willingness to experiment with romanticism.

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Their obsession with place

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and their obsession with family.

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My parents were important,

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but Virginia may have been the single most[br]important person in my life.

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She's an extraordinary woman.

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She was my family.

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I was raised by Virginia,

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[Virginia & Sally][br]who worked for my parents for 30 years.

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Virginia Carter was born right down the road

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and lived in a black community of freed slaves[br]called Buck Hill,

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and married very young and had five children.

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And, remarkably, with what she earned,

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sent all five children away to boarding school.

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Because, of course, you didn't have public[br]school for black children

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here in Virginia.

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And then she sent every one of them through college.

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That's a remarkable woman--

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she's just breathtaking.

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And compassionate, and warm,

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and big, and generous,

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and embraced us in a way...

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[SIGHS]

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[VIRGINIA MANN]

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[VIRGINIA MANN] Thanks, mom.

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[SALLY MANN] Take a picture of you?

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[VIRGINA] No, thanks.

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[SALLY] This is good. What is this thing?

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Do that again.

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Good girl! [LAUGHS]

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["The Two Virginas" (1988–1991)]

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Going to church with Virginia was an ecstatic[br]moment.

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First of all, you'd have to get dressed up,[br]which we didn't do.

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[Easter Sunday, 1956][br]We didn't get dressed up in our family.

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We didn't go to church.

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She'd get us all dressed up and we'd go.

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And the singing, and the clapping...

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it's like a great tide.

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You felt like you were roiled around

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and in waves of emotion and song

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and feeling.

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When I think of the hardships in her life

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and the inequities,

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it's astonishing that she could love three[br]white children

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who didn't have a clue.

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[Virginia Franklin Carter, 1894–1994]