Words matter. These are the best Sally Mann Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
At the age of 16, my father’s father dropped dead of a heart attack. And I think it changed the course of his life, and he became fascinated with death. He then became a medical doctor and obviously fought death tooth and nail for his patients.
I have a vivid, apocalyptic imagination.
When you look at your life as an artist, you do see that when you get to be 60, you’re coming – this is the last chapter.
I have had a fascination with death, I think, that might be considered genetic for a long time. My father had the same affliction, I guess.
When I read something, I picture that scene in that detail. That becomes very similar to composing a photo in real life.
I think the media is a fear-mongering operation. They love to rile their viewership up or to scare them.
It didn’t help my career to be living in Appalachia.
The thing that makes writing so difficult is you don’t have the element of serendipity. At least with a photograph, you can set up the camera, and something might happen. You might be a lousy photographer, but you can get a good picture if you just take enough of them.
You start blocking out things, and that’s a really important part of taking a picture is the ability to isolate what you’re – what you’re concentrating on.
It’s not a lack of confidence, because I can’t argue with the fact that I’ve taken some good pictures. But it’s just a raw fear that you’ve taken the last one.
I chose photography over writing. I had to make a living.
I’m not an ardent feminist – well, maybe I am an ardent feminist. I just roll my eyes at the way women are constantly used and how sensitive men are about photographs of themselves.
Weeks go by, and I don’t talk to another living soul.
I had written my master’s thesis on Ezra Pound on ‘The Cantos.’ And don’t ask me about it. I don’t remember anything about it.
I guess I have a certain willingness for audacity.
I’m not a good photographer, not a good writer. I’m a pretty regular person whose insecurity is so pervasive that it makes me always feel vulnerable.
Time, memory, loss and love are my main artistic concerns, but time, among all of them, becomes the determinant.
Increasingly, the work I’m doing is in service to an idea rather than just to see what something looks like photographed. I’m trying to explore how I feel about something through photography.
I work all the time. I never leave home. I mean, I just stay honed in on what’s ahead.
Writing is much, much harder than taking pictures because you have to man-haul it all out of your insides.
I couldn’t deal with a normal life.
Maintaining the dignity of my subjects has grown to be, over the years, an imperative in my work, both in the taking of the pictures and in their presentation.
I don’t like memoirs. I think they’re self-serving, and people use them to settle scores, and I really tried not to do that. You have to have a really interesting life to justify memoir, and my life has been pretty ho-hum.
The whole nature of photography has changed with the advent of a camera in everybody’s hand.
Death makes us sad, but it can also make us feel more alive.
I’d park myself in the bookstore and read with one eye on everyone coming in. I remember reading a Robert Bly book of poetry.
If I take enough pictures, I’m going to get a good one, and I know not to stop at a bad one.
It’s a touchy subject, but as a Southerner, you can’t ignore our history any more than a Renaissance painter can ignore the Virgin Mary. And it’s impossible to drive down a road or eat a vegetable or pass a church without being reminded of slavery.
When we were on the farm, we were isolated, not just by geography but by the primitive living conditions: no electricity, no running water and, of course, no computer, no phone.
It’s usually so fraught when you’re taking a picture. I work with an 8-by-10 view camera and there’s a, you know, hood that I put over my head, and it’s tricky and complicated.
