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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the artist's anxiety and the precarious nature of achieving success in creative endeavors.
In this quote, Sally Mann expresses the challenges and pressures that come with being a photographer and artist. She likens the experience of capturing a successful image to a nervous step along a difficult path, where each success brings with it a recognition of the fears and doubts that accompany the journey. Mann suggests that the pursuit of artistic excellence is fraught with anxiety, where each achievement feels fragile and is overshadowed by the looming possibility of failure.
Themes
ArtAnxietyPhotographySuccessFearDoubt
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can inspire young photographers who struggle with confidence in their artistic abilities.
More from Sally Mann
All quotes →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.
Sally MannRead
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.
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.
Sally MannRead
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