Quotes by Sally Mann an artist that we studied about in class.

The artists that we studied in class are ones that I have long admired and known about.  Their work is no stranger to me, nor is their life and the path to photographic success.  The words offered are but a glimpse of how THEY have expressed themselves to the world.  I start with:

SALLY MANN

.photographs open doors into the past but they also allow a look into the future. - Sally Mann, Photography Speaks II : 76 Photographers on Their Art by Brooks Johnson (Editor), Chrysler Museum , ISBN: 0893816523 , Page: 134

....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 impermanence, 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. - Sally Mann - Still Time catalogue Alleghany Highlands Arts and Crafts Center, 1988

“…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.”

“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.”

 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. 

 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. 

 When the good pictures come, we hope they tell truths, but truths “told slant,” just as Emily Dickinson commanded. 

 ... 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. 

 If I could be said to have any kind of aesthetic, it’s sort of a magpie aesthetic—I just go and pick up whatever is around. If you think about it, the children were there, so I took pictures of my children. It’s not that I’m interested in children that much or photographing them—it’s just that they were there... . 

 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. 

 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.