Art Work: On the Creative Life

There's something about the particular eloquence of Sally Mann's photographs—their locality, their intimacy, and the sense you get of her as not merely a silent, reserved observer but a real participant in her compositions—that makes it unsurprising she is such a good writer too. The first evidence was her 2011 memoir, Hold Still, a National Book Award finalist; the second is this book, which she thought she'd never write until she found herself jotting chapter headings. It's presented as an artistic self-help book, and it reminded me of my favorite in that genre, Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, in its attention to both the practical and passionate sides of long-term art-making. But Mann is such a personal artist, and such a natural storyteller, that inevitably this is another memoir of sorts, adding to her life story and revisiting her obsessions with place and family and the joys and the grind of creation.