Sally Mann: "The Two Virginias" | ART21 "Exclusive"

[Sally Mann: "The Two Virginias"]

My parents couldn't agree on where to live.

My mother found the South unbearable.

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

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

[May 11, 2000]
and she was miserable.

She was 98 pounds.

She was sleeping on the floor in a sweat.

She was living off Coca-Colas.

So they just looked at a map,

and they split the difference between New
Orleans--

where my father was in heaven--

and Boston, and found Charlottesville,

and then they found Lexington.

And then they found this farm.

[Lexington, Virginia]

There are a number of things that
set Southern artists apart

from anyone else.

Their love of the past

and their susceptibility to myth.

And their willingness to experiment with romanticism.

Their obsession with place

and their obsession with family.

My parents were important,

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

She's an extraordinary woman.

She was my family.

I was raised by Virginia,

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

Virginia Carter was born right down the road

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

and married very young and had five children.

And, remarkably, with what she earned,

sent all five children away to boarding school.

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

here in Virginia.

And then she sent every one of them through college.

That's a remarkable woman--

she's just breathtaking.

And compassionate, and warm,

and big, and generous,

and embraced us in a way...

[SIGHS]

[VIRGINIA MANN]

[VIRGINIA MANN] Thanks, mom.

[SALLY MANN] Take a picture of you?

[VIRGINA] No, thanks.

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

Do that again.

Good girl! [LAUGHS]

["The Two Virginas" (1988–1991)]

Going to church with Virginia was an ecstatic
moment.

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

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

We didn't go to church.

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

And the singing, and the clapping...

it's like a great tide.

You felt like you were roiled around

and in waves of emotion and song

and feeling.

When I think of the hardships in her life

and the inequities,

it's astonishing that she could love three
white children

who didn't have a clue.

[Virginia Franklin Carter, 1894–1994]