The collection / 11 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01Undated

Part of the artist's job is to make the commonplace singular, to project a different interpretation onto the conventional.

Sally Mann / quote

02Undated

The act of looking appraisingly at a man, studying his body and asking to photograph him, is a brazen venture for a woman; for a male photographer, these acts are commonplace, even expected.

Sally Mann / quote

03Undated

I'm going out on a limb here and say that I believe my morality should have no bearing on the discussion of the pictures I made. ... Oscar Wilde, when attacked in a similar ad hominem way, insisted that it is senseless to speak of morality when discussing art, asserting that the hypocritical, prudish, and philistine English public, when unable to find the art in a work of art, instead looked for the main in it.

Sally Mann / quote

04Undated

The hardest part is setting the camera on the tripod, or making the decision to bring the camera out of the car, or just raising the camera to your face, believing, by those actions, that whatever you find before you, whatever you find there, is going to be good.

Sally Mann / quote

05Undated

I tend to agree with the theory that if you want to keep a memory pristine, you must not call upon it too often, for each time it is revisited, you alter it irrevocably, remembering not the original impression left by experience but the last time you recalled it. With tiny differences creeping in at each cycle, the exercise of our memory does not bring us closer to the past but draws us further away.

Sally Mann / quote

06Undated

Art is seldom the result of true genius; rather, it is the product of hard work and skills learned and tenaciously practiced by regular people.

Sally Mann / quote

07Undated

Every time it’s the same. It’s easy to prove to myself that good pictures are elusive, but I can never quite believe they’re also inevitable. It would be a lot easier for me to believe they were if I also believed that they came as a result of my obvious talent, that I was extraordinary in some way. Artists go out of their way to reinforce the perception that good art is made by singular people, people with an exceptional gift. But I don’t believe I am that exceptional, so what is this that I’m making?

Sally Mann / quote

08Undated

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 / quote

09Undated

I have a vivid, apocalyptic imagination.

Sally Mann / quote

10Undated

Death makes us sad, but it can also make us feel more alive.

Sally Mann / quote

11Undated

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 / quote