Hold Still
A Memoir with Photographs
-
-
4.4 • 59 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
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."
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Photographer Mann's sensuous and searching memoir finds her pulling out family records from the attic, raising questions about the unexamined past and how photographs "rob all of us of our memory," and calling upon ancestry to explain the mysteries of her own character. Rockbridge County, Va., a place of great beauty, is the site of Mann's uncontained childhood; her wedding to her lifelong companion, Larry Mann; and the idyllic family farm, where she took the photographs collected in Immediate Family (1992). Those photos of her three young children in the nude, and the controversy that erupted around them, "changed all our lives in ways we never could have predicted, in ways that affect us still," she says, firmly stressing that photography is mere artifice, that the images "are not my children." The pictures and fallout attracted a fanatic stalker, who kept the Mann family on edge for years. (Indeed, this memoir periodically reads like a crime thriller.) Mann's power at evoking the raw fear that comes with being a parent is uncanny, and she is equally insightful when discussing her own childhood. Her book is also a catalogue of material objects letters, test grades, teacher reports, even a letter of complaint from the superintendent of schools regarding 16-year-old Mann's wild driving. The vivid descriptive energy and arresting images in this impressive book will leave readers breathless. Illus.
Customer Reviews
Art as Life
Sharp and pungent, like a good cheese. This is delicious memoir.
Boring
Had to read this for class and just didn’t like it.
Hold Still by Sally Mann
Wise, witty, erudite, this book is just a sheer delight.