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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
EarthDeathArtistMemoryPowerfulPreservationExpression
In practice
Example use cases
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.'
More from Sally Mann
All quotes →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.
Sally MannRead
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
Similar quotes
I leave you free to imagine any dialogue you please. Choose whatever may charm you. Have it, if you like, that they hear the voice of the blood, or that they fall in love at first sight... Conceive the wildest improbabilities. Have it that the depths of their beings are thrilled at accosting each other in slang. Tangle them suddenly in a swift embrace or a brotherly kiss. Do whatever you like.
Jean GenetRead
Art is something greater and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which, though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from a man's soul.
Vincent Van GoghRead
For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. He's not from another planet, or filled with radioactive gunk. I mean, Superman is essentially a god, but Batman is more like Hercules: he's a human being, very flawed, and bridges the divide.
Christopher NolanRead
Variety is very, very good. Going from medium to medium, if you get the chance to do it, from theater to television to film, which are all distinctly different, keeps me sharp. What works in one doesn't work in the other, and you have to be looking for the truth of the performance, whatever way that medium might demand.
Kenneth BranaghRead
All that is good in art is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it.
John RuskinRead
There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire.
William CongreveRead