Increasingly, the work I'm doing is in service to an idea rather than just to see what something looks like photographed. I'm trying to explore how I feel about something through photography.
Sally MannRead
The earth doesn’t care where death occurs. ...It’s the artist, by coming in and writing about it or painting it or taking a photograph of it, that makes the earth powerful and creates death’s memory. Because the land will not remember by itself, but the artist will.
Interpretation
Artists have the power to immortalize moments of death through their work.
This quote emphasizes the unique role of the artist in preserving memories of death and the emotional impact of such moments on the earth. While the natural world may remain indifferent to loss, artists breathe life into memories through creative expression, allowing us to remember and feel the significance of those moments.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of art in society, one might say, 'As Sally Mann said, the artist transforms the Earth’s silence into powerful memories.'
Increasingly, the work I'm doing is in service to an idea rather than just to see what something looks like photographed. I'm trying to explore how I feel about something through photography.
Sometimes, when I get a good picture, it feels like I have taken another nervous step into increasingly rarified air. Each good-news picture, no matter how hard-earned, allows me only a crumbling foothold on this steepening climb—an ascent whose milestones are fear and doubt.
It's a touchy subject, but as a Southerner, you can't ignore our history any more than a Renaissance painter can ignore the Virgin Mary. And it's impossible to drive down a road or eat a vegetable or pass a church without being reminded of slavery.
I 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.
I've tried a few times to depart from what I know I can do, and I've failed. I've tried to work outside the studio, but it introduces too many variables that I can't control. I'm really quite narrow, you know.
I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart
I believe that Judy Garland's artistry was so fine. I mean, when people say: 'oh, she brought so much of her life to her music', I don't really believe that. I believe that she didn't have to. She just was a moving human being. That was her gift.
I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.
To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail, that failure is his world and the shrink from desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living.
Drag breaks the fourth wall, which is why it's never been quite accepted, because nobody wants to be told that they are really a caricature of themself and to not take yourself too seriously.
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