Sally Mann (born in Lexington, Virginia, 1951) has remained close to her roots, photographing in the American South since the 1970s. She is renowned for her resonant landscape work, trenchant studies of mortality, and intimate portraits of her children and husband. A Guggenheim fellow and three-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Mann was named America's Best Photographer by Time magazine in 2001. She has been the subject of two documentaries: Blood Ties (1994) and What Remains (2007), and in 2011 she presented at Harvard the William E. Massey Sr. Lecture in American Studies, which planted the seeds for Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs (2015). Mann's work has been the subject of major exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Mann's other Aperture books include Immediate Family (1992, reissued 2014), Still Time (1994), Proud Flesh (copublished with Gagosian Gallery, 2009), and The Flesh and The Spirit (copublished with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2010).

Ann Beattie (introduction), a preeminent writer of her generation, has written numerous books, including the novels Chilly Scenes of Winter (1976) and Falling in Place (1980); the short-story collections Where You'll Find Me (1986) and The Accomplished Guest (2017); and Alex Katz (1987), a monograph of the painter's work.