Hold Still

"That confounding parallax of personal history is what photographer Sally Mann explores throughout Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs — a lyrical yet unsentimental meditation on art, mortality, and the lacuna between memory and myth, undergirded by what Mann calls her “long preoccupation with the treachery of memory” and “memory’s truth, which is to scientific, objective truth as a pearl is to a piece of sand.”"

"Sally Mann’s memoir, Hold Still, is a book about a photographer, but it’s only partially about photography. The native Virginian’s personal story is just as much about the South as it is about her own journey. In one section, she looks back on family road trips with her beloved childhood nanny, Gee-Gee, and remembers that she never saw her nanny eat; Gee-Gee was African-American, and the restaurants they went to were segregated. All the while, Mann explores “the treachery of memory,” or how photographs can erode our memories of an experience. But there’s nothing faded about this memoir – Mann’s paints a picture that’s as vivid as they come."

"Sally Mann is a great storyteller. In her memoir, Hold Still, she manages to talk about her work so that it is understandable in the context of her life."