96 Quotes by Sally Mann

There are a number of things that set Southern artists apart from anyone else. Their obsession with place and their obsession with family.

Unless you photograph what you love, you’re not going to make good art.

Photographs supplant and corrupt the past, all the while creating their own memories.

I think truth is a layered phenomenon. There are many truths that accumulate and build up. I am trying to peel back and explore these rich layers of truth. All truths are difficult to reach.

These dog bones are just making art the way art should be made, without any overarching reference. Just for fun, if you can imagine that-art for fun.

As 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.

I 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.

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.

I like to make people a little uncomfortable. It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do.