Some of my pictures are poem-like in the sense that they are very condensed, haiku-lik. There are others that, if they were poetry, would be more like Ezra Pound. There is a lot of information in most of my pictures, but not the kind of information you see in documentary photography. There is emotional information in my photographs.

Sally Mann

Categorized in : Would Be Photography Emotional

I like to make people a little uncomfortable. It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do.

photography people thinking

One of the things my career as an artist might say to young artists is: The things that are close to you are the things you can photograph the best. And unless you photograph what you love, you are not going to make good art.

careers love-you art

Photographs open doors into the past, but they also alloq a look... by Sally Mann

Photographs open doors into the past, but they also alloq a look into the future

photography inspirational past

The things that are close to you are the things you can photograp... by Sally Mann

The things that are close to you are the things you can photograph the best.

I struggle with enormous discrepancies: between the reality of motherhood and the image of it, between my love for my home and the need to travel, between the varied and seductive paths of the heart. The lessons of impermanance, the occasional despair and the muse, so tenuously moored, all visit their needs upon me and I dig deeply for the spiritual utilities that restore me: my love for the place, for the one man left, for my children and friends and the great green pulse of spring.

spiritual spring children

Every image is in some way a “portrait,” not in the way that it would reproduce the traits of a person, but in that it pulls and draws (this is the semantic and etymological sense of the word), in that it extracts something, an intimacy, a force.

portraits photographer way

It's always been my philosophy to try to make art out of the everyday and ordinary...it never occurred to me to leave home to make art.

home philosophy art

As ephemeral as our footprints were in the sand along the river, so also were those moments of childhood caught in the photographs. And so will be our family itself, our marriage, the children who enriched it and the love that has carried us through so much. All this will be gone. What we hope will remain are these pictures, telling our brief story.

childhood rivers children

I think truth is a layered phenomenon. There are many truths that accumulate and build up. I am trying to peel back and explore these rich layers of truth. All truths are difficult to reach.

layers trying thinking

Like all photographers, I depend on serendipity I pray for what might be referred to as the angel of chance.

serendipity angel might

The earth doesn’t care where death occurs. ...It’s the artist, by coming in and writing about it or painting it or taking a photograph of it, that makes the earth powerful and creates death’s memory. Because the land will not remember by itself, but the artist will.

powerful writing memories

I have nothing but respect for people who travel the world to make art and put exotic Indians in front of linen backdrops, but it's always been my philosophy to try to make art out of the everyday and ordinary.

philosophy people art

If it doesn’t have ambiguity, don’t bother to take it. I love that, that aspect of photography - the mendacity of photography. It’s got to have some kind of peculiarity in it, or it’s not interesting to me.

photography photographer interesting

Unless you photograph what you love, you're not going to make goo... by Sally Mann

Unless you photograph what you love, you're not going to make good art.

photograph love-you art

I’m so worried that I’m going to perfect [my] technique someday. I have to say its unfortunate how many of my pictures do depend upon some technical error.

errors technique perfect

What is truth in photography? It can be told in a hundred different ways. Every thirtieth of a second when the shutter snaps, its capturing a different piece of information.

pieces different photography

Sometimes I think the only memories I have are those that I’ve created around photographs of me as a child. Maybe I’m creating my own life. I distrust any memories I do have. They may be fictions, too.

memories children thinking

It is easier for me to take ten good pictures in an airplane bathroom than in the gardens at Versailles.

versailles airplane garden

Photographs supplant and corrupt the past, all the while creating... by Sally Mann

Photographs supplant and corrupt the past, all the while creating their own memories.

creating memories past

I can think of numberless males, from Bonnard to Callahan, who have photographed their lovers and spouses, but I am having trouble finding parallel examples among my sister photographers. The act of looking appraisingly at a man, making eye contact on the street, asking to photograph him, studying his body, has always been a brazen venture for a woman, though, for a man, these acts are commonplace, even expected.

eye men thinking