An Interesting Book…

Art Work: On the creative life by Sally Mann

2025

Sally Mann is an American photographer who calls herself an artist. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and three time recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship.

She finds she gets too many questions when she says she is a photographer. She also does not want to be roped into taking photos of weddings or babies.  I could not agree with her more on this front. 

She says, “And why not? Being an artist is not such a big deal. When you get right down to it, art is a job a profession not unlike being an insurance adjuster or a sportscaster. And it’s not all that hard either. The writer Nell Zink once asserted that. You could take the winos off the sidewalk in front of a drug store and teach them to be poets in half an hour. And I had a friend who quipped that he could strap his iPhone on his cat and have a series of masterpieces by the end of the day. In a similar vein, Veronica Geng once wrote a mordant New Yorker piece in which several hostages play ‘Lifeboat’ to pass the time. Whom do you throw off:  the nun, the pregnant woman, the majorette, or the artist Helen Frankenthaler? ‘Throw off Frankenthaler,” one of them says. “What’s art anyway? Somebody making some little something.” 

So like the drowned woman, I an just somebody making some little something. Many little somethings. A lot of the time. And how many little somethings I have made over a long, long time perhaps qualifies me to write this book.” (from the Prologue)

Throughout the book she shares some of her photos, her journal entries, her little drawings and doodles. She makes lists. She does some bits of poetry. 

I am really drawn to this book and can’t wait to get into it further. How many of us do these exact little things? Photos on our phones or cameras. Journalling, sketching, making lists to get through a day.

I think I’m going to enjoy dipping into and out of this book and hopefully get some inspiration for my own photography, making lists, journalling little poems or illustrations. 

I think when the world is so crazy or we go through health or home problems we need to step back and immerse ourselves in something that is creative, calming and often just makes us laugh. My drawings always make me laugh. I’ve been told by children in the past that I am good at drawing. Just like a five year old!!

Question:  What do you do to escape the world of stress to calm yourself. Photograph? Draw? Paint? Journal? Read? Walk? I’d like to hear about it very much.