Sally Mann's New Works Highlight Paris Photo 2025.

6 hours ago7 min read

The hallowed halls of the Grand Palais in Paris are set to become the epicenter of the photographic world once more with the arrival of Paris Photo 2025, a fair promising a journey from vintage icons to the bleeding edge of contemporary vision, but the true showstopper, the acquisition that will have cinephiles of the still image whispering in reverent tones, is a suite of never-before-seen works by the great American visual storyteller, Sally Mann. For those who understand photography not as mere documentation but as a deeply narrative art form, akin to the most poignant independent cinema, Mann’s inclusion is the equivalent of a director’s cut from a legendary auteur suddenly emerging from the vault.Her body of work, from the controversial and intimate ‘Immediate Family’ to the haunting, ethereal landscapes of ‘What Remains,’ has always operated with the layered symbolism and emotional gravity of a Terrence Malick film, each print a single, powerful frame from a larger, unwritten epic. The announcement that she will unveil new pieces here, in this city of light that has long championed artistic audacity, sends a clear signal that the fair is not merely a marketplace but a curator of legacy, a platform for defining the next chapter in a medium perpetually caught between its chemical past and its digital future.One can imagine these new Mann pieces, their specifics still tantalizingly under wraps, continuing her profound exploration of memory, mortality, and the Southern Gothic tradition, rendered with the technical mastery that makes her darkroom work feel like alchemy. Beyond this headline act, the Grand Palais will unfold as a sprawling narrative of its own, a multi-chapter story where a rare, vintage silver gelatin print by Cartier-Bresson—a perfect ‘decisive moment’—can hold a conversation with a sprawling, digitally-constructed tableau by a young artist from Berlin, challenging our very definitions of authenticity and the photographer’s hand.The stakes for galleries and collectors are immense, with the market for photographic art becoming increasingly robust and discerning, yet Paris Photo 2025, under the guidance of its new director, seems poised to argue that the soul of the medium lies not in its price tags but in its power to arrest time, to tell stories without words, and to frame the human condition in a way that is both universally resonant and intensely personal. It is the Cannes Film Festival for the image, a red-carpet event where the stars are not actors but visions captured in light and shadow, and this year, all eyes will be on Sally Mann’s long-awaited new scene.

#Paris Photo 2025

#Sally Mann

#photography

#Grand Palais

#art fair

#contemporary art

#vintage photography

#featured

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