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. Sally Mann More Quotes by Sally Mann More Quotes From Sally Mann There is a great quote from a female writer. She said, 'If you don't break out in a sweat of fear when you write, you are not writing well enough. I tend to agree. I think my best pictures come when I push myself. Sally Mann sweat writing thinking All the good pictures that came so easily now make the next set of pictures virtually impossible in your mind. Sally Mann next mind impossible There's always a time in any series of work where you get to a certain point and your work is going steadily and each picture is better than the next, and then you sort of level off and that's when you realize that it's not that each picture is better then the next, it's that each picture up's the ante. And that every time you take one good picture, the next one has got to be better. Sally Mann next levels photographer There is something about this process, and about the whole 8 x 10 [camera] business, that takes it out of the arena of the snapshot, even though, of course, I'm always desperate for that feeling. I wanted those family pictures to look effortless. I wanted them to look like snapshots. And some of them did. Sally Mann cameras feelings looks There are a number of things that set Southern artists apart from anyone else. Their obsession with place and their obsession with family. Sally Mann southern artist numbers These dog bones are just making art the way art should be made, without any overarching reference. Just for fun, if you can imagine that-art for fun. Sally Mann dog fun art You can tell a good ruined lens, right from the get-go.... That’s the kind of lens I'm looking for. Sally Mann ruined lenses kind I don't see many artists who are not trying to bring their work to the public - -to the contrary I see artists nearly desperate to get attention for their art and, failing that, often for themselves. Sally Mann trying attention art As an artist your trajectory just has to keep going up. the thing that subverts your next body of work is the work you've taken before. Sally Mann body artist taken 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 emotional photography would-be Sometimes, when I get a good picture, it feels like I have taken another nervous step into increasingly rarified air. Each good-news picture, no matter how hard-earned, allows me only a crumbling foothold on this steepening climb—an ascent whose milestones are fear and doubt. Sally Mann taken doubt air When the good pictures come, we hope they tell truths, but truths 'told slant,' just as Emily Dickinson commanded. Sally Mann emily telling-the-truth photographer My main interest was finding boyfriends. I'd park myself in the bookstore and read with one eye on everyone coming in. Sally Mann bookstores parks eye Like all photographers, I depend on serendipity, and when you're photographing children there's often an abundance of it. I would have an idea of what a photograph would look like and then something would happen - a dog might lumber in and become a critical element. I pray for what might be referred to as the angel of chance. Sally Mann angel dog children I’m past photographing to see what things look like photographed. Sally Mann looks past To be able to take my pictures, I have to look, all the time, at the people and places I care about. And I must do so with both ardor and cool appraisal, with the passions of eye and heart, but in that ardent heart there must also be a splinter of ice. Sally Mann passion eye heart The fact is that these are not my children; they are figures on silvery paper slivered out of time. They represent my children at a fraction of a second on one particular afternoon with infinite variables of light, expression, posture, muscle tension, mood, wind and shade. These are not my children at all; these are children in a photograph. Sally Mann light expression children I wish I could be a better writer, but writing is so difficult. I get seduced by visual aesthetics. Because I just like making beautiful pictures, sometimes I wander away from making a clear statement. Sally Mann wish writing beautiful 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. Sally Mann drive ignore you history Each time you take a good picture, you have the wonderful feeling of exhilaration... and almost instantly, the flip side. You have this terrible, terrible anxiety that you've just taken your last good picture. Sally Mann picture good you time
