Tile worker, South India

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

You wait for your eye to sort of “turn on,” for the elements to fall into place and that ineffable rush to occur, a feeling of exultation when you look through that ground glass, counting ever so slowly, clenching teeth and whispering to Jessie to holdstillholdstillholdstill and just knowing that it will be good, that it is true.  Like the one true sentence that Hemingway writes about in A Moveable Feast, that incubating purity and grace that happens, sometimes, when all the parts come together.

And these pictures have come quickly, in a rush… like some urgent bodily demand.  They have been obvious, they have been right there to be taken, almost like celestial gifts.  

Sally Mann in Hold Still:  A Memoir with Photographs

Comments are welcome!