A Quote by Sally Mann

I never read about photography. — © Sally Mann
I never read about photography.
I don't think it's necessary to put your feelings about photography in words. I've read things that photographers have written for exhibitions and so forth about their subjective feelings about photography and mostly I think it's disturbing. I think they're fooling themselves very often. They're just talking, they're not saying anything.
I never read anything in print about me. It started with not reading reviews and with the greatest respect to my publicist here, I never read interviews. I was there when I gave them. I never read reviews. I was there when I did the jobs - so I'm totally immune. I live in a bubble.
I think we seem to remember things in still pictures. I never gave up on painting. When they said painting was dead, I just thought, Well, that's all about photography, and photography's not that interesting, and it's changing anyway.
I never read. I've never read one book... I just can't do it. Something's wrong with me. I have what they call now is 'ADD,' like I'll read and all of a sudden I'll be thinking about shopping or... I'm not there. I drift off. I get crazy, so I don't even bother.
I like to think of Photography 1.0 as the invention of photography. Photography 2.0 is digital technology and the move from film and paper to everything on a chip. Photography 3.0 is the use of the camera, space, and color and to capture an object in the third dimension.
I am a former economist. I never went to photography school to learn photography.
The first half of the 20th century belongs to Picasso, and the second half is about photography. They said digital would kill photography because everyone can do it, but they said that about the box brownie in 1885 when it came out. It makes photography interesting because everyone thinks they can take a picture.
[I]n general, my work is less about expanding the possibilities of photography than about re-investing it with a truer perception of things by returning to a simple method, one that photography had from the beginning of its existence.
'Princess' is a good word, as is 'girlish', 'pixie-like' and all these other things. I personally find it a bit boring, it's all been done before. The amount of times you read reviews of bands and it's an all-girl four-piece, and they talk about what the women are wearing... you'll never read a review that's like: "Male singer Thom Yorke, who was dressed in a white t-shirt and jeans..." You would never read that about a man.
The one thing I'm terrified of trying to write about is sex. I mean my God, my wife might read it or my daughter might read it or my son might read it, so no, I've never really written about eroticism at all.
I think that it's workshops, honestly, that have kept me keen about photography, and about my photography. My career as a workshop photographer came while I was at the Geographic in the late 70's, and has continued consistently since then.
First you study photography, then you practice photography, then you serve photography, and finally one becomes photography.
Read, read, read, read, read. Read everything. You can’t work unless you know the world, and outside of living in the world the best way to learn about the world is to read about it.
I like to keep my personal life private. I did read one of those stories, and it made it seem like just because I don't go out and I'm not the subject of tabloid photography, I've never had a relationship in my life, like if a relationship isn't documented by a picture, it doesn't exist. I don't want to talk about it.
To me, traditional approaches to doing photography and thinking about photography feel increasingly anachronistic.
I love photography... I'd like to write a show about photography.
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