I just started taking pictures, and it was – it was an instant love affair. It was just ecstatic. – 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
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
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 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
The whole nature of photography has changed with the advent of a camera in everybody’s hand. – 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
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 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’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
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
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 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
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
Time, memory, loss and love are my main artistic concerns, but time, among all of them, becomes the determinant. – 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
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
Matte digital prints are gorgeous, don’t you agree? But the glossy digital prints, I just can’t stand that paper. – 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
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
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 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
