SALLY MANN...Inspiration, Doubts & Questions

During the presentations I was intrigued by Sally Mann...Some photos were confronting and I wanted to look away but couldn't help but look. Having my own children I recognise that most of the photos are simply the kids at play and are not manipulated into anything other. In saying this some of the photos I personally would have not published...

In all she has given me some inspiration for not only my final folio but for my own personal photographic documentation of my family. All to often photographs of people are staged, posing at the camera. I want to capture my children for who they are in all kinds of personal adventures. All to often we sit at the dinner table and reminisce events, however small and laugh or cry. As my children grow and experience life at it's various stages they forget so quickly and unfortunately so do we as adults.  

I want to capture life of my family and close friends "Behind Closed Doors" and capture how they feel and want to be seen as a contrast to how they are seen. Can I do this? I don't know. What will people think? I don't know. But it will be so relevant for me and my family and then one day their family to see and have.

"...I struggle with enormous discrepancies: between the reality of motherhood and the image of it, between my love for my home and the need to travel, between the varied and seductive paths of the heart. The lessons of impermanence, the occasional despair and the muse, so tenuously moored, all visit their needs upon me and I dig deeply for the spiritual utilities that restore me: my love for the place, for the one man left, for my children and friends and the great green pulse of spring."


Sally Mann