Hold Still by Sally Mann

This National Book Award finalist is a revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history from acclaimed photographer Sally Mann.

In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.

Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: "deceit and scandal, alcohol, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land . . . racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder."

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In lyrical prose and startlingly revealing photographs, she crafts a totally original form of personal history that has the page-turning drama of a great novel but is firmly rooted in the fertile soil of her own life.

Why I Picked It Up

Sally Mann is beloved in the studio art program I studied in at Washington & Lee, the university in her hometown of Lexington, Virginia.

Like Mann, I've cried in the darkroom at W&L (my Photo I professor hated everything I turned in), scraped my way through building a career in the arts, and obsessed over sense of place and the Southern Gothic genre. I studied her prints in department-wide presentations I found more boring than my actual classes at the time, listening to professors who held her in the highest reverence.

Sally Mann, On the Maury, 1992, gelatin silver print, private collection. © Sally Mann

Years after my graduation, Mann is more influential and mythological for me than she was in college. (I also rarely read memoir or biography up until about two years ago, when I started peppering in more books by and about writers and artists I admired—wanting the whole of their context.)

This spring, I read Art Work: On the Creative Life, which I adored while grappling with the existential challenges of being creative, so wanted to backtrack to Hold Still when I got the chance. I ended up finishing Hold Still on the highway (I-81) a day into our road trip from Ontario to Florida, at which point we landed in Lexington for the night. I ordered a Wedding Bells (forgive me—a Going to the Chapel) from Harden's for some college nostalgia, and was grateful for our mutual connection to that area of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

About the Book

Credit / Bennington College.

Hold Still follows Mann through her childhood and priorities, through her rebellious years in boarding school to her broke college years at Bennington College and beyond.

While Art Work focuses more on her art processes and interests, Hold Still grapples with her family history and the complicated racial legacy of Lexington, Virginia—where, as I wrote this review in our neighborhood coffee shop, I witnessed two men book clubbing over a book of Civil War letters. (I hate to typecast, but I tend to have an assumption there.)

My attention drifted more in Hold Still than in Art Work, but I now adore and respect Mann, so each anecdote she chose to share deepened my longing to be just a little more like her when I "grow up." She's also relatively unflinching in what she chooses to talk about, handling topics with an intimacy and bravado that others might find impolite or even incorrect. She gave me a lot to think about.

Two examples:

One—I find it rather brave for her to talk about her experiences with race as a white girl growing up in Lexington, which has a lot of Civil War history embedded in it. She admits where she's made mistakes or assumptions, or been blind to moments of privilege, and I can't help but think similar memoirs would get ripped to shreds for the same. I'm of the opinion that impact matters more than intention in those instances but that we also need to give people room to grow, and I think many are more likely to not talk about those experiences than to write a full chapter on the hired Black help they grew up loving, wondering about the line between employment and care.

Two—Mann's work is controversial because she photographs her children nude and playing, and in deeply vulnerable moments. She's photographed her husband in the throes of muscular dystrophy, and dead bodies in part of a scientific study in Tennessee. Considering the hard line I had against child exploitation in Fortesa Latifi's Like, Follow, Subscribe (which deals with parent/family influencers), I'd assume I would land on that side for Mann too. Regardless of the beauty of these images, can a child consent?

Sally Mann's Vinland, 1992, from the collection Immediate Family. Photograph: Sally Mann, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

Which forced me to unpack a few thoughts of my own, mainly whether I was being a hypocrite about this kind of content because I like Mann and believe her intentions. Was it hypocritical for me to think her photography wasn't child exploitation because it's fine art? Or because the kids are hidden away in a rural area? Or because she says she asked for their permission—both to take the photos initially, then to share them later in her career and in this book?

See—she pushes me to the line.

In Mann's case, I feel I mostly find these images acceptable because her kids do have the rare Calvin & Hobbes-esque childhood. When Immediate Family—the photo project in question—first came out, it was 1992 and before the advent of social media. The danger was that the photos would be printed in newspapers and distributed in galleries; the online ecosystem is profoundly different, so I think the conversation is fundamentally different than the influencer-based content; however, my awareness of the overlap between these two subjects made me try to examine my own bias.

By the time social media existed, and Hold Still and Art Work came out, reprinting those photos is natural. The way she spoke to the visibility element of her work and artistic practice and family life post-Immediate Family resonated a lot with me, however; most creatives nowadays grapple with that tipping point of who they are in public vs. private—a longing of sorts to retreat back.

Voice & Tone

Those are a few examples of what I consider brave in her subject matter, and a good bit of the bravery relies upon her own relatively removed upbringing. She doesn't overthink too much in what she (seemingly) chooses to verbalize, but goes with her gut. In modern panopticon culture, I view that as a positive, and appreciate her grounded perspective. She's okay with showing her own flaws through the prism of her own curiosity. As Mann herself puts it, she's brave but not fearless.

I'm a line-level writer and a line-level reader—a phrase I trot out frequently—so I adore when an author has a brilliant vocabulary. Sally Mann used so many incredible words and descriptions, and I ended up with a long list of terms I wanted to memorize and layer into my own lexicon. I'm not on the "modern books are too simplified rah rah" train whatsoever, but I do think that sophistication is rarer nowadays.

Another aspect I love about her particular style of memoir—which makes sense since she's a visual artist—is that she layers in lots of visual evidence: photographs, letters, tickets, marginalia. Lots of primary sources and materials. She corroborates her impressions, analyzes when they feel unfinished, etc. You can tell she runs a studio, which I love.

There's a good bit of tragedy in her background too, which she narrates rather matter-of-factly; her husband's mother murdered his father in an apparent murder-suicide related to social climbing. (Also, I gasped at the car anecdote.) Her own dad committed suicide when it was clear his health would only devolve. Although not touched upon in the memoir (it occurred after), Mann's son was schizophrenic and ultimately committed suicide. Her narration is tender, but not overly emotional, and she's clearly tough in a way I admire.

Mann and I have different opinions on separating the art from the artist, which fits in how I approached Hold Still too. I don't think her work and photography would be meaningful to me if not for loving the thought process and history informing them—her style is a bit too haphazard for me, like wandering around a given setting and having to fill up an entire roll for class.

But we're all entitled to our own methods of processing art. Mine tells me that within a time of oversaturation in which visibility makes a world of difference to an up-and-coming artist, I'd rather spend my limited time, currency, and attention on those I perceive to have morals I align with. Mileage may vary. Art, however, is subjective, so I see Mann's work differently and more favorably since I like her as a person—in the limited ability I have to peek inside her mind via memoir. She got lucky in some ways (all artists have to), and she put in the damn work. Her perfectionism and growth and effort are constantly clear throughout the book, and I love to see that. She scraped and was flat broke at times, but didn't romanticize it either; she speaks to the awfulness and difficulty of the early years. I loved the way she spoke about her failures especially.

I could go in many different directions of conversation based on the many thought-provoking points and topics that surface in her book.

Also, my history with Lexington made me especially affectionate towards the book.

Lines & Moments I Loved

“It is easier for me to take ten good pictures in an airplane bathroom than in the gardens at Versailles.”

“My long preoccupation with the treachery of memory has convinced me that I have fewer and far more imperfect recollections of childhood than most people. But having asked around over the years, I'm not so sure now that this is the case.”

“I shouldn't make fun here of the loopily excited girl who wrote that letter after developing her first roll of film. Because I am still that girl when it comes to developing film.”

“...those sultry summer nights when the fog rose from the bottomland and wisped along the racemes of white bloom.”

“In certain charming ways (and others less so), much of the town dozed off in 1865 and hasn't ever quite awakened.”

“Choosing to work outside the art world's urban centers, as both [Cy Twombley] and I have done, is difficult, at least it certainly has been for me.”

“The fact is that these are not my children; they are figures on a silvery paper slivered out of time. They represent my children at a fraction of a second on one particular afternoon with infinite variables of light, expression, posture, muscle tension, mood, wind, and shade.”

“Often a beautiful landscape would surprise me there, ambushing me with the allure of its self-sufficiency.”

Overall Thoughts

I loved Hold Still largely because I love Sally Mann. I drifted through it more than with Art Work, likely because her second book was more concrete, but I enjoyed hearing about her family history and upbringing to give greater context. She had a wonderful vocabulary that made specific lines a pleasure to read, and I love the marginalia layered into her storytelling, which makes it feel in some ways (pleasant ways) like riffling through a family member's attic or sitting on their front porch listening to stories with a glass of iced tea—worthwhile even when you drift. Her photos are dreamy, ethereal, and occasionally haunted, which I love. I loved the way she talked about the contradictions of the South too.

On a content note: you shouldn't pick this one up if some of the more graphic photos will bother you, because there's not much way to avoid them. You will see some photos of corpses! As Mann herself notes, she has a fascination with mortality, inherited from her dear ol' dad.

For fans of:

Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck by William Souder; True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen by Lance Richardson; Art Work: On the Creative Life by Sally Mann; Upstream by Mary Oliver; Deep Creek by Pam Houston; Just Kids by Patti Smith; etc.