Fifth Author Portrait: Sally Mann

Portrait of Sally Mann
7x5 charcoal on paper

This is my imagined scene of the photographer and writer in studio with her 8x10 view camera behind her.

Earlier this year I read her memoir with photographs Hold Still.

She has a very lyrical style of writing with an erudite vocabulary. At a certain point I just abandoned the dictionary and went with the flow of her prose, getting the meaning in context. She juxtaposes the rapturous beauty of the deep South where she grew up with confronting the disturbing legacy of African American slavery that continues to haunt the present lives there.

Personally, I'm not terribly keen on her obsession with death, a theme that runs through this writing.