Mann began to photograph rural churches in 2008, with a guidebook directing her to many that had been founded in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Some were still active, while most had been abandoned. Mann captured these buildings with an 8 × 10 inch camera and high-contrast film. She printed the images on expired photographic papers that she liked for their tonal unpredictability. A number of the churches appear at one with nature, surrounded by bushes and trees that recall the “hush arbors” where slaves worshipped in secret in the antebellum South. Others have an ethereal quality, the result of Mann’s use of antique lenses unable to capture extreme contrasts of light.