Featured Book: Hold Still by Sally Mann

Sara Trucksess

It is truly a gift to be able to listen to an artist explain their craft in their own words. Sally Mann’s Hold Still is described as a memoir with photographs, but it is really so much more. Part family history and part artist’s memoir, this novel rings most true as an ode to Sally Mann’s myriad experiences – controversial and otherwise – and is practically a poem that could have easily been titled “The Ballad of Sally Mann.” Rife with adjectives and adverbs that are relatively unused in the English language and offer the kind of description that only Mann could provide, the artist and author shares her philosophy on photography, memory’s truth, and capturing life from behind the camera.

In an age where we are constantly being reminded to put down our cameras (a.k.a. iPhones) and live only in the moment, Mann ponders her life as a photographer and its implicit effect upon her memories. Whether or not Mann’s memories are imperfect due to her position behind the lens, they are still qui…