A Quote by 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.
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The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.
When you work fast, what you put in your pictures is what your brought with yoiu - your own ideas and concepts. When you spend more time on a project, you learn to understand your subjects. There comes a time when it is not you who is taking the pictures. Something special happens between the photographer and the people he is photographing. He realizes that they are giving the pictures to him.
My taking pictures means I'm taking a series of pictures which become an essay and then get extended into a book. That's what's exciting, to take an idea and work it through to completion.
It would be so easy to lose the plot now. It's not about achieving something for its own sake, and taking pictures for their own sake. But to make conscious decisions and choices, and it includes this constant questioning - Why am I taking pictures? Because really, the world is... it has pictures enough. I mean, there are enough pictures out there.
I learned to be a hot-air balloon pilot to take tourists over the Masai Mara Reserve in order to earn some money and finance the work I was doing with my wife, Anne. We were studying the life of a family of lions for more than two years. Taking pictures was a way to capture information we could not put in words.
One achieves true human dignity only when one serves. Only he is great who subjects himself to taking part in the achievement of a great task.
My fans have grown up with me and seen my life change over the years, from a young girl with 'Goodies' to a full-grown woman and now mom.
Since I switched to an iPhone, I did start taking pictures of people I like. Until then, I strangely never took pictures. I think the iPhone became this space that was different enough from a "photograph," so I find myself taking pictures of daily things. If someone I dated asked me to take their picture, I would most likely find it disturbing. Perhaps nude pictures would be fun. But that would have to be on an iPhone.
It's not imperative that I graduate in four years, and it's not imperative that I get all A's.
I wanted to make pictures that contradicted themselves. I wanted to put one picture on top of another so that there were times when both pictures disappear and other times when they were both manifest. That vibration is basically what the work was about for me - that space in the middle where there is no picture, rather an emptiness, an oblivion.
Work is fundamental to the dignity of the person. Work, to use an image, 'anoints' with dignity, fills us with dignity, makes us similar to God who has worked and still works, who always acts.
What does it mean to go deeper? Taking pictures when you're more emotional or sorrowful, or having sex? I just want to have really boring snapshots - people just standing in front of a camera taking pictures with a smile.
I'm something of a black belt at break-ups. I have had two long-term relationships in my life, both of 10 years, both resulting in children, and both very much over. Things end. It is how you manage them being over that's key.
Maintaining a relationship is easy when you both are in same profession because you understand the work pattern.
Every few years when it's been another five years that have passed and I haven't made a film and the depression starts taking over totally, I allow myself to do a commercial. And then I feel really dirty and get to work promptly.
The reaction from the fans has, quite possibly, been the most rewarding part of the journey thus far. I feel as though the fans have grown with me over the past 12 years through both triumph and disappointment.
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