If it doesnโt have ambiguity, donโt bother to take it. I love that, that aspect of photography - the mendacity of photography. Itโs got to have some kind of peculiarity in it, or itโs not interesting to me.
Sally MannI wish I could be a better writer, but writing is so difficult. I get seduced by visual aesthetics. Because I just like making beautiful pictures, sometimes I wander away from making a clear statement.
Sally MannYou can tell a good ruined lens, right from the get-go.... Thatโs the kind of lens I'm looking for.
Sally MannSome of my pictures are poem-like in the sense that they are very condensed, haiku-lik. There are others that, if they were poetry, would be more like Ezra Pound. There is a lot of information in most of my pictures, but not the kind of information you see in documentary photography. There is emotional information in my photographs.
Sally MannThere is something about this process, and about the whole 8 x 10 [camera] business, that takes it out of the arena of the snapshot, even though, of course, I'm always desperate for that feeling. I wanted those family pictures to look effortless. I wanted them to look like snapshots. And some of them did.
Sally Mann