Sally Mann's Lessons on the Creative Life

""I swore I wouldn't write another book because it's really hard!" she laughs when we speak ahead of the book's publication. Mann calls from her family farm in Lexington, Virginia, surrounded by heaving bookshelves. "But before Hold Still was even off the presses, I was thinking about things I had left out. I am so endlessly self-questioning. I started making notes and it was a slippery slope. Art Work was so casual, I was writing as if I was talking to somebody in person. Hold Still was heavier.""

"Sally Mann's venerated photographic practice is deeply personal. Inspired by her surrounding family and community, she takes emotionally nuanced - at times highly controversial - images of life in the US South and its haunting landscape. Following her popular autobiography Hold Still (2015), she has written Art Work: On the Creative Life, which explores her artistic trajectory alongside diary entries and photographs. Loosely, it offers advice on developing a creative career, but this is no simple how-to book."

"Mann is candid about the chance meetings and luck that helped to catapult her to icon status - alongside her profound talents - while acknowledging the struggle of entering the art world pre-internet, coming from outside the major art capitals. "I think it's hard for younger artists to understand what it was like before the internet. There were no galleries down here. It was really a difficult process. There are simpler ways to do it," she smiles. "Find some rich parents ...""

Sally Mann's photographic practice is deeply personal, drawing on family and community to produce emotionally nuanced and sometimes controversial images of the US South and its landscape. Art Work: On the Creative Life pairs diary entries and photographs to trace an artistic trajectory while offering loose advice on developing a creative career. The narrative emphasizes contradictions and accidental fortunes that shaped the practice in ways planning could not replicate. The account highlights pre-internet challenges of entering the art world, the impact of chance patronage, and the messy clarity that comes with retrospective vision.

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