A Matter Of Time
Add your //In Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, the madman Hamm stands at the asylum window, staring out at the beautiful seaside vista and can see only ashes. His friend begs him to look again, but he turns away, he can only see the dark side.
We need to be able to see both the beauty and the dark side of things; the cornfields and the full sails, but the ashes, as well.
I see them both at the same time, at once ecstatic at the beauty of things, and saddened by that ecstasy. The Japanese have a word for this dual perception: mono no aware. It means “beauty tinged with sadness”... for is there any real beauty without the whiff of decay?
For me, living is the same thing as dying and loving is the same thing as losing and this does not make me a madman like Hamm: it makes me better at living, better at loving and better at seeing. //here
Sally
Mann
[1951]
Sally Mann was born, lives and works in Lexington, Virginia. She received a BA from Hollins College in 1974, and an MA in creative writing from the same school in 1975. Her work has been influential since her first solo exhibition, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., in 1977. Her subjects have ranged from her family and animals, her surroundings, the over-arching concept of mortality, and the conflicting atmosphere of the Deep South.
Her exhibition ‘A Matter of Time’ at Fotografiska in 2012 demonstrated Sally Mann’s persistence in creating images that may be local for her but at the same time address universal, global issues. Her themes present deep-seated contradictions, contradictions we often do not wish to acknowledge. Her gift is that she asks the big questions, and answers them with beauty. Mann´s photographs are in the permanent collections of many museums, including MOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.
Photography is a thin and dangerous medium…
Sally Mann telling her stories that created // HOLD STILL // ... enjoy