If it doesn’t have ambiguity, don’t bother to take it. I love that, that aspect of photography - the mendacity of photography. It’s got to have some kind of peculiarity in it, or it’s not interesting to me.
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 MannIt's always been my philosophy to try to make art out of the everyday and ordinary...it never occurred to me to leave home to make art.
Sally MannAs an artist your trajectory just has to keep going up. the thing that subverts your next body of work is the work you've taken before.
Sally MannThere is a great quote from a female writer. She said, 'If you don't break out in a sweat of fear when you write, you are not writing well enough. I tend to agree. I think my best pictures come when I push myself.
Sally MannI can think of numberless males, from Bonnard to Callahan, who have photographed their lovers and spouses, but I am having trouble finding parallel examples among my sister photographers. The act of looking appraisingly at a man, making eye contact on the street, asking to photograph him, studying his body, has always been a brazen venture for a woman, though, for a man, these acts are commonplace, even expected.
Sally Mann