Welcome to a collection of insightful and thought-provoking quotes by Sally Mann, a renowned American photographer known for her captivating explorations of family, memory, and the complexities of the Southern landscape. With an exquisite eye for detail and a unique ability to capture the raw essence of her subjects, Mann’s work transcends mere imagery, delving deep into the human experience and confronting the nuances of life, love, and loss.
Throughout her illustrious career, Sally Mann has wielded her camera as a tool for storytelling, weaving narratives that resonate on a deeply personal level while also inviting viewers to contemplate universal themes of identity and existence. From her intimate portraits of her own children, often controversial for their candid portrayal of childhood innocence and vulnerability, to her haunting landscapes that evoke a sense of nostalgia and introspection, Mann’s body of work is as diverse as it is captivating.
Below, you’ll find a curated selection of Sally Mann quotes that offer insights into her creative process, her views on art and photography, and the profound observations she has gathered from her lifelong exploration of the world through her lens. These quotes can serve as inspiration for fellow artists, photographers, and anyone who seeks to uncover the beauty and complexity of the human experience.
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. Sally Mann
I try and take the commonplace – and some of it is writ large, like death – take the commonplace and make it universally resonant, revelatory, and beautiful at the same time. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
If I take enough pictures, I’m going to get a good one, and I know not to stop at a bad one. Sally Mann
I don’t know what the instinct is, to save every report card, every half-sentence scribbled note, but my mother did it pretty effectively, and I’ve done it to a fare-thee-well. Sally Mann
Time, memory, loss and love are my main artistic concerns, but time, among all of them, becomes the determinant. Sally Mann
To be able to take my pictures, I have to look, all the time, at the people and places I care about. Sally Mann
I have a vivid, apocalyptic imagination. Sally Mann
The whole nature of photography has changed with the advent of a camera in everybody’s hand. Sally Mann
I just started taking pictures, and it was – it was an instant love affair. It was just ecstatic. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
I guess I have a certain willingness for audacity. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
I couldn’t deal with a normal life. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
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
I baked bread, hand-ground peanuts into butter, grew and froze vegetables, and, every morning, packed lunches so healthful that they had no takers in the grand swap-fest of the lunchroom. Sally Mann
I remember when the family album came out, people would just knock on our door because they thought they knew us, and that, of course, is one of the great hazards. Sally Mann
When I read something, I picture that scene in that detail. That becomes very similar to composing a photo in real life. Sally Mann
When I read, I take notes and underline things. So reading is a vigorous process for me, but I read in bed. My poor husband is trying to go to sleep, and I’m reaching over him to get the Post-it notes. Sally Mann
Eventually, my highbrow parents, who so hated the Eisenhower suburban culture of the 1950s that the only magazines they subscribed to were ‘The Atlantic’ and ‘The New Yorker,’ broke down and got ‘Life’ magazine. Sally Mann
I was just taking pictures to see what they looked like. Just for the fun of it. It wasn’t about anything in some cases. Some of them were just about the joy of opening up an aperture and seeing what shows up. Sally Mann
The fundamental thing about my personality is that I think I’m an imposter. Sally Mann
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
Weeks go by, and I don’t talk to another living soul. Sally Mann
I’m the weird person who completely loved and devoured ‘Middlemarch’ but who has not finished far shorter and more readable books due to distraction or the fact that by some miracle I am sleeping through the night. Sally Mann
Death makes us sad, but it can also make us feel more alive. Sally Mann
I have three libraries. As a gift, a friend alphabetized and organized my main library of novels, history books, and nonfiction. Then I have a photo-book collection. Then there’s this nearly whole room of my childhood books. I’ve also got cookbooks and a big collection of horse-related books. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
Very few males have the confidence to appear vulnerable. Sally Mann
It didn’t help my career to be living in Appalachia. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
Though I made my share of mistakes, as all parents do, I was devoted to my kids. I walked them to school every morning and walked back to pick them up at 3. Sally Mann
I chose photography over writing. I had to make a living. Sally Mann
I’m just the opposite of a lot of photographers who want everything to be really, really sharp. And they’re always, you know, stopping it down to F64. Sally Mann
Matte digital prints are gorgeous, don’t you agree? But the glossy digital prints, I just can’t stand that paper. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
I couldn’t be Susan Sontag. I’m not very good with abstract thought. I always just take to the emotional core of me. Sally Mann
I feel I’m a strange mixture of insecurity and strength. Most of us, probably most people. I’m transferring that same concept to the people I photograph. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
I taught up in Maine a couple of times and wasn’t able to take a single picture. All that blue sky! Ugh. Sparkling clear air, just terrible. I couldn’t do it. Sally Mann
The two sensibilities, the visual and the verbal, have always been linked for me – in fact, while reading a particularly evocative passage, I will imagine what the photograph I’d take of that scene would look like, even with burning and dodging notes. Maybe everyone does this. Sally Mann
I think the media is a fear-mongering operation. They love to rile their viewership up or to scare them. Sally Mann
Writing is much, much harder than taking pictures because you have to man-haul it all out of your insides. Sally Mann
I never read about photography. Sally Mann
I have no animus toward digital, though I still pretty much take everything on a silver-based negative, either a wet plate or just regular silver 8×10. But I’ve started messing a little bit with scanning the negative and then reworking it just slightly. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
Don’t get between me and a really good picture in the darkroom, because then I want to go straight to the darkroom and develop it. But once that’s done, I’m fine. Sally Mann
I work all the time. I never leave home. I mean, I just stay honed in on what’s ahead. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann
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. Sally Mann