Jackson Fine Art Winter Exhibitions (thursdays)

From the venue:

“What knowing watchfulness in the eyes of a twelve-year-old… at once guarded, yet guileless. She is the very picture of contradiction: on the one hand diffident and ambivalent, on the other forthright and impatient; half pertness and half pout. Impossibly, she is both artless and sophisticated, a child and yet a woman.” 

- Sally Mann from At Twelve (1988)

Jackson Fine Art is delighted to announce the premiere of previously unreleased photographs from Sally Mann’s groundbreaking series At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women, a collective portrait of twelve-year-olds on the verge of adulthood. The artist is renowned for her evocative work exploring themes of family, identity, and the American South.  The portraits in this exhibition were taken by Mann between 1983-1985 with her large format camera in Rockbridge County, Virginia, the artist’s birthplace and where she continues to live and draw inspiration. She revisited her At Twelve archive last year, discovering unseen treasures, remarking: “One of the advantages of a long life is that you get to go back and revisit parts of your work that were overlooked, sometimes inexplicably, in early years.”

Twelve is an age of expanding horizons, enriched by social experiences and shared connections. It is also a transitional period, navigating the delicate space between childhood and adulthood. The At Twelve portraits reveal this delicate balance, portraying both the innocence of youth and the yearning for maturity. The young women in these images are relatives or daughters of friends, but also, many are others living in her small Virginia community who trusted the artist to capture their individual spirit with grace and honesty. Taken nearly forty years ago, these images continue to hold relevance today, bridging the past and present in their exploration of this transformative stage in a young woman’s life.

We are honored to be able to present the exhibition in close collaboration with the artist and Gagosian. Jackson Fine Art has exhibited Mann’s work since 1996 and this the artist’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery.

exhibition page here