Sally Mann: Hold Still

Sally Mann, Untitled (#49 Woven Branches 2, Frontispiece) Sally Mann opens her memoir, Hold Still (Little, Brown), by invoking the muese. An outdated word, the meuse is a mark left in the ground after a small animal leaves; the grass or dust bears an imprint of its departed body. The meuse is a natural parallel of photography, a trace left in the world by a person-a photographer's subject, or perhaps the photographer herself. The meuse is not the actual animal, but a mirror of presence, and this...