>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: sally mann is one of america's prominent photographers. it she has captured images that are disturbing, hunting, and romantic all at once. she has created a strikingly beautiful photo that outrage some for the composition and nudity. it should write about that moment come as well as her life and work in a new called "hold still: a memoir with photographs ."

i spoke with sally mann for a rare and candid conversation in new york city's gallery. what brought you to say rather than taking pictures, i'm going to write about taking pictures in my own life? sally: what got me there was i was invited to live with lecturers at harvard. at night was a mistake. -- i thought it was a mistake. the lectures are in our each. they are scholarly, intellectual lectures. it took me a year to say yes. i had plenty of time to think about it. charlie: this is a combination of like and photography. sally: it is, but it turned out

to be more than that. when i set out to write, i went back so far in time and began to study the whole genetic trail that got me there. i went up to the attic like everybody does. dugout all the old memories. the pictures and the letters and the ship's manifests and all that stuff. charlie: your work seems to be interested in life and death and memory and history and place. sally: yeah. that may be because i'm a southerner. you know about that. charlie: i do. sally: you like to tell stories. -- charlie: you like to tell stories. sally: i do. charlie: when did this love

affair with photography begin? sally: early really. 17. charlie: did your dad give you your first camera? sally: he did. he had taken it around the world in 1939. 1937. he handed it to me with virtually no explanation this is how you load the film. remember all that stuff. i started taking pictures. it was an instant love affair. charlie: what was it? sally: it was a static -- e cstatic. the joy of looking at a negative dripping down your arms and looking at the light. magic. charlie: it is more than taking a picture. sally: you take the picture. you pray you got the second you

thought you got. so many times you don't. you get the second on either side of the one you hope you got. there is nothing like that moment. it is a most sexual in its intensity. you're just ecstatic. even in negative form which is in reverse, you could tell right away. it has the right feel to it. you just know. charlie: you like black and white. sally: i do. it is harder. that is not why i like it. it makes you get right to the essence of taking the picture. you are not distracted ride the color. color is an entirely different

way of thinking. charlie: you live on a farm that is full of color. green grass. blue skies. everything. sally: it is funny though. i see everything in black and white. i see things like icu -- i see you in a little a by 10 rectangle. charlie: oh god. [laughter] sally: it is ability to isolate what you are concentrating on. sometimes when i read a book it will be describing a scene and i will see it in my mind. i will see it as a black and white photograph. it should be darker. softer. the river should be dark, that

the trees -- usually all the time. charlie: back to technique. sally: oh gosh. [laughter] charlie: i heard the reason why you like photography is because of the dark room. sally: sort of a euphemism. [laughter] there was that. no question about that. charlie: you took your first intimate photographs there. sally: i did. i nearly got in trouble for it. i got in trouble for everything. i was a little minx. i was a bad girl. the pictures got me in trouble. for one, i was innocent. it involved nudity. charlie: let's talk more about that. sally: ok. maybe not. [laughter] charlie: there are so many

things that compete with who you are as a photographer. it has to do with family. landscapes. you wanted to go back to where you came from. back to virginia. sally: i never left virginia. the whole time i was miserable. i miss the mountains and the kindness of the people. the whole sweetness of the land. vermont did not do it for me. the south is known for so many unkindness and violence. but it could also have the sweetest, kindest people. most generous.

charlie: there was a building there you photographed. sally: a law school. i photographed that. charlie: and an exhibition. sally: you have done your homework. good grief. charlie: it is you, your life. these photographs sit on top of a life. sally: a big pile of them. charlie: especially your life. sally: yeah. charlie: you go back to a place where your father was a general practitioner. your mother ran a bookstore. sally: yes. charlie: your husband loved horses? sally: yes. he just cannot ride unfortunately. charlie: immediate family.

sally: the book came out in '92. started the pictures probably closer to '85. charlie: how do you measure getting better? you could see the difference between sally then circa 2015 to 2000. 15 years. sally: yeah. i don't know if it is an intellectual process. i ask intellectual questions. the difference is that used to be taking pictures of the same things. the impulse was to take teachers to save something or to -- pic tures to save something or to see what it would look like in a photograph.

now it is a lot more orton to -- important to save something. i'm trying to use the photographs to a concept. i didn't start out that way. i was just take pictures when the kids were around and gradually constructed around them. charlie: immediate family, they were around. sally: a documentary. charlie: they grew to become what? sally: they grew to have a narrative around them. metaphorical implications. it got much more complicated. sally:charlie: did you know what you are doing? sally: no.

i used a commonplace to somehow make images that were resonant and revelatory in anesthetic and lyrical way. what could be more commonplace than children, rugrats? charlie: children at a cabin. sally: yeah. i worked with 12-year-olds before that. charlie: they were under 10 at the time? sally: the kids were not even born then. charlie: but when you took photographs, they were all under 10. sally: yeah. charlie: what were you saying? what were you telling us? on one hand it is all the things of what it means to be young and

jumping in the water and all that. on the other hand, people read into themes of loneliness quietness, sexuality. sally: people read unbelievable things into it. that is what was shocking to me. it was not without undertones. some of the ways they were interpreted were shocking to me. charlie: you know there are the controversy. sally: i didn't. i was blindsided. charlie: by all the things people said or accused you of. sally: yeah. there was that. charlie: people consider them beautiful and brilliant. it marked you as a photographer. people said you were a great photographer. that was the beginning of sally

mann's public -- sally: that's true. charlie: you had talked to psychologist. sally: mmm-hmm. charlie: you concerned about showing photographs they didn't like. sally: yeah. editorial discernment. that is the concern many people have. how could they know? they were visually sophisticated kids. they knew what we were doing. we talked about the pictures. do you like this? what do you think this picture says? does it say something about you you are not comfortable with? charlie: what did your husband

say? sally: the same. charlie: this is a close family. sally: yeah. charlie: you have no secrets between them. sally: i imagine there are a few secrets, but we are a close family. charlie: now they are adults. how do they see those photographs? sally: i usually answer that by saying you should ask them. [laughter] they are all in their 30's. you could consult them. i think they are proud of them. virginia wanted to give immediate family to her teacher for christmas. charlie: they understood and appreciated it? sally: i think they understood it. that is the argument i make. i'm sure some may take issue

with that.

♪ charlie: here is virginia. tell me what it is like to live in a household where you had a mother who was obsessed by photographing that what she knew best about?

virginia: one of the things you may not appreciate about the pictures is that we were incredibly lucky to have a mother who was home all that time. we got to work with her and she found a way to make the work collaborative. even though she was obsessed, it was our reality. charlie: she taking pictures of your reality. virginia: exactly. absolutely. charlie: it is about us. we are part of this. virginia: we were proud of it. charlie: did you want to become a photographer? to do what mom does? virginia: no. [laughter] i don't have the aptitude for it. i never wanted to go into anything involving photography or are at all. charlie: are you and your brother and sister different in terms of how you view all of this? virginia: i don't think so.

i think we were all just incredibly proud of this body of work and proud of what mom has achieved. it is something we feel we have achieved. we have been through so much of it. every body of work was collaborative. we went through choosing which pictures would be in the show. charlie: your part of choosing the pictures. even if they were pictures of landscapes? virginia: i don't know. [laughter] charlie: this made her famous. and you to a degree. when you look back didn't have an impact on you?

-- did it have an impact on you? virginia: it is hard to say. i was quite young when the book came out. i was seven or eight when the book came out. it was something i adapted to quite weekly. i think for jesse, they felt the shift a little more severely than i did. charlie: a shift in? virginia: in our life. we were suddenly traveling the world. they were known in a way we had never experienced before. sally: i think there were moments when it was character building. virginia: it certainly presented its own unique challenges. i find that i get quite attractive of our privacy. when people find out who i am there is this debate of how did

the kids turn out? idle think that is anybody's business. i am who i am. i have my own identity. -- i don't think that is anybody's business. i am who i am. i have my own identity. charlie: the book added a dimension to your life? virginia: exactly. but everyone has their challenges. charlie: after "muted family" sally moved on. she has been exploring themes of plays, history, and mortality. i asked her -- "immediate family," sally moved on. she has been exploring themes of place history, and mortality. sally: it calls to you. i decided to take landscapes. it was true. i would have my camera set up.

i'm thinking 8 x 10. i would find these beautiful images. milky glass with the camera. i was seduced by landscapes. i was contiguously available for seduction. the kids were -- charlie: you were available for seduction to rephrase. [laughter] i'm available if any landscapes want me. here i am. sally: yeah. [laughter] charlie: you write about that here. sally: yes. prose. charlie: then there is gigi. you write about her. sally: very important to me. i read in the book -- i was

raised as a ferrel child. that whole 1950's thing. it was very hands off. i would be gone all day long and no one would even look for me. charlie: i had complete freedom. i had no curfew. sally: yeah. me too. i was a child. i think my parents just didn't care. [laughter] charlie: they knew i could take care of myself. sally: i have this beagle that would go all over for miles. i would come home. the tar on the road, i would chew the tar when i was hungry. nobody would care. they would wipe the tar off my

mouth. charlie: i got ahead of myself. these are 2005. sally: you probably know better than i do. that was linked in with the deep south pictures. i don't know. i'm sure you have it somewhere. charlie: what remains from 2003. there is your -- what was it about? dying? understanding what it means? sally: almost a documentary impulse. she died. i could not bear to leave her. i had her skinned and i took the

body and buried it and ended up decomposing in this constellation of little bones. it went from there. it was an oddly to make. -- odd leap to make. charlie: you get engaged by something like that. you go on a rampage. sally: i'm a little terrier like . [laughter] charlie: you get interested in other dead bodies and decomposing bodies. sally: yeah. charlie: you just wrote a memoir. sally: i know. she said if i could say it in words, i wouldn't have danced it for you. [laughter]

charlie: your camera is your story. not your book. your book is part of what you are thinking about. find some meaning in it. sally: it is a huge translation. usually it is enough to take a picture and put it up on the wall. your meaning is plain. to somehow make the translation from visual art to written words, it was quite interesting. it is a whole different way of thinking. to be able to talk about your work. not so easily it turned out. charlie: in "hold still," pictures reveal a fine talent for writing. was it hard for you? to amass these pictures? the pictures spoke.

you show us the hard reality. or the beautiful reality. sally: i try to. charlie: are you using mortality and death and what happens and what remains? that is what you titled it what remains. sally: that show. you do ask that question. a library had burned down. i lost my father. you do. it is that notion of what finally is memory of him? what remains? how do you preserve the moment? can you? is her such thing as an after --

is there such thing as an afterlife? charlie: that was involved in "what remains"? casualties in america. sally: yeah. charlie: you go back to the living. sally: yeashh. charlie: there is hope and there is a future. sally: exactly. a vitality and that is what i love about the body of work. charlie: but you go from death to life. sally: the negative to the affirmative. charlie: in 2009 "proud flesh." sally: maybe one of my favorite bodies of work and one of the toughest. it is a -- anytime you make a picture of a vulnerable subject,

and he is vulnerable. he has got muscular dystrophy. parts of his body have lost control. his bicep is no bigger than my wrist. no muscle. charlie: that is what muscular dystrophy does to you. as hard as it is -- sally: it is harder for him. it was hard for me, but harder for him. when you have a subject who is willing to put themselves out like that and completely unashamed and willing to be in a picture that comes at the expense of his vanity vulnerability, exposure -- all photographic orchards, -- portraits, that is the risk always.

no matter how used to photographing you are. charlie: can we see trust? sally: i should say yeah. there are pictures i have taken that made me ache for him. are you sure you want me to show these pictures? yes. in a sense, that measure of comfort was worth it to him. we like to think it is a good piece of art. charlie: what was the response? sally: i'm still photographing him. he is still willing to do it. more than willing. he believes what we make together is important.

45 years. we have managed to put in another good 11 years. i'm not good at math. yeah, 11. [laughter] you saw my math score. they are in the books. charlie: yeah. you chose the right profession. [laughter] sally: it is a demanding mistress.

charlie: when did being an artist come to you and not just photography? it is more than just taking pictures. sally: i was always bifurcated between writing and photography. i loved both. i wanted to be a poet. it is hard to do. i guess early on i didn't think of it quite that way. wear a rakish beret.

i wanted to look like an artist. [laughter] the left bank of lexington. [laughter] wanted to be an artist, i wasn't sure i could pull it off. charlie: and every new technology that comes down the pipe -- sally: i'm borrowing a little. charlie: ahh. sally: i cannot ignore it. charlie: because it gives you power to do things? sally: you eah. i could get what i want better. not quite sure i will get it up. i love it. charlie: pure liquid. sally: that in bourbon. -- that and bourbon. [laughter] charlie: i knew there was a reason i loved you so much. [laughter]

sally: that is a good title. don't you dear steal it from me. charlie: and -- sally: i pulled it out of the text. hold still. it is important. some and said it should be titled "hold still: sally mann" because i'm humming bird-ish. charlie: you are. you are tough on yourself and on your art. demanding a lot of yourself. you live on a platoon of family but you attack the world. sally: so insecure.

this book masquerades as vanity. other people see my career as one success piled onto another. i see myself as botched to botched. failure to failure. charlie: i'm asking. sally: i don't know. i never think it is good enough. i look back. i'm reshooting things. perfection. perfection. those are the goals. charlie: would you recognize perfection if you saw it? sally: there are a few pictures i would say are perfect and i wouldn't change a thing. charlie: what do they contain? sally: that something this -- something-ness. what a copout, right?

[laughter] charlie: i have asked opera star s in their career, are there moments onstage when you knew you had nailed it? you have put notes together in a way you cannot even remember how you'd did it. you just know that night that song, you are there. sally: yeah. charlie: and they say -- sally: and they say? charlie: yes. sally: it is transcendent. fleeting the same time. charlie: there is a great story. had just delivered a great performance.

they went backstage. to congratulate him. hehad had his head in his hands. you have never been better. you know how good you were. i know. i don't know how. sally: he doesn't know how he did it. yeah. charlie: do you believe in that? you believe in -- [laughter] sally: i said to you one time i did not believe in talent and you said you did. i thought we should settle this once and for all. i think there is a weighted sensibility. maybe that is what talent is. i don't know. it is so vanishingly small in

the scale of things. charlie: i have come mostly to where you are. sally: oh good. charlie: mostly because after doing this for so long and talking to so many people of enormous talent -- sally: or what you inc. is talent. -- think is talent. charlie: there was talk about effort in how hard it was. they all do. sally: i know. charlie: are you convinced -- sally: are you convinced now? charlie: more convinced now. you are good most of all because of the labor that goes into it. sally: it is set to do it and do it into you get it right. charlie: i wondered if what is essentially true is if a select few could reach that kind of greatness and those who had

something special and they put in the 10,000 hours, the hard work. that sense of this is not right. sally: i do think there is some privileged sensibility. were not talk about proust or mozart. those guys are really geniuses. i'm talking about the rest of us who are ordinary people who work hard. charlie: when people saw your work, they knew there looking at something special. they see what comes out of it. sally: isn't that true of everything? every book you hold up when you are interviewing someone it is five years of their life. charlie: exactly. what was hardness of this book? the memories? or getting it right?

sally: getting it right -- why should it take five years? you believe me, don't you? many people have said this to you, i'm sure. charlie: absolutely. sally: the difference is i remember robert frank lived in an apartment in a courtyard. he said he used to see them turn up at the painting on the campus. talk for this had to hold the viewfinder to his face -- the photographer had to hold the viewfinder to his face and take the moment. when you are writer, it is so much more difficult. i had to conjure the old thing up from scratch. photography is about choices.

writing is about choices, but you had to create the choices. they're not out there in the world for you. charlie: do you want to do it again? sally: i don't think so. charlie: you have nothing left to say? sally: god knows. 500 pages. charlie: but it is 2015. you talk about everything here. you talk about how photography contains the world. sally: i think they can. charlie: how so? sally: i think he is brilliant. i made that announcement that at that photography could change the world. he is one of the people who has been making photographs that i think has changed the world. it is a historical fact. stop the vietnam war.

charlie: it did. sally: it trying -- change the course of the civil war era not interrupt you. charlie: photographs. moving images of brutality. violence. charlie:sally: yeah. we cannot have this in america. that is what is going on today. charlie: everybody has a camera. sally: a cabbie was having a fight with a woman on park avenue. standard new york argument. three people video recording. it was not even a fistfight. it was just yelling. don't tell me photography doesn't make a difference. charlie: look at something like instagram with how people are obsessed with photographs.

people prefer photographs to text any day of the week. social media has real impact. we are looking at thousands of people killed by an earthquake in nepal. sally: i do listen to the news. oh my god. -- i don't listen to the news. oh my god. charlie: it clearly has influence. it also has meaning. it could take you to places that only your mind can imagine. sally: i think it is limited --

a photograph isin terms of what it could conjure. we're talking about what it could do politically. the difference, the way photographs work with memory is so much for different man other things. just the idea of a curling yellow photograph and yet there is texture and shape and form and detail and three-dimensional. photography is an interesting and complicated concept that are varied ways in which it is used. charlie: there is power in your dark room. sally: right. charlie: there would be a picture on the cover of a newspaper. there be a different picture

inside that an editor chose. but you choose first. sally: have you ever studied contact sheets? charlie: yeah. i'm aware of it. sally: it's fascinating. a perfectly normal kid. there's nothing weird about him. 12 pictures on a roll. the stake it standing there. -- just this kid stand -- standing there. she chooses the terrible grimace. wife people picked the pictures they did is fascinating -- why people picked the pictures they did is fascinating. charlie: wrote about this.

sally: yeah. charlie: wrote to death about it. she was worried. she took pictures. just shoot. sally: yeah. she has one of those modern cameras. you just push it and it is like a machine gun. [laughter] i'm beginning to see the utility of it. how could you go wrong? just push the button. just shoot. charlie: point and shoot. sally: it is that simple. this point and shoot. you will get a good picture. charlie: that is the point. being able to frame it. she said she looked at all the pictures and they're all kind of

out of focus but there is one you saw. that is the one. sally: we set it in unison. we were scrolling through. boom. just like that. charlie: talk about gigi. tell me more about her. sally: i think there was a gigi and a lot of people's generation. wrote about the importance of that person. an oddball. needed extra coddling or attention or fewer difficult like i was. i'm sure you were not an easy child either. [laughter] i'm not sure higher parents were , but my -- i'm not sure what

your parent -- how your parents were, but mine were not available. charlie: talk about your father and mother. sally: a third of the book is devoted to my father. he deserves every page. he's one of the most complex, interesting -- he was that. that is difficult. he was contemptuous of television. very much an intellectual. an art lover. foodie. sophisticated on almost every level. read the atlantic. harper. he got them all every sunday. they were intellectuals.

i think he probably -- he was a medical doctor, but he gave up a medical doctor to become a devoted one. he gave up literature and art. it is very interesting. charlie: he knew it. sally: he did. there is that for nancy -- poi gnancy of squandered genius. always. charlie: your mother's daughter? sally: i look almost identical to my mother. it is shocking. charlie: genetics. sally: genetics. i was walking down the street in boston one time. a man asked if i was her.

he hasn't seen her in over 40 years. i'm her daughter. [laughter] charlie: think about all of the relationships. i assume gigi made you interested in -- sally: she made me aware of it but not overtly. she was very circumspect. it was when i went to me that it was introduced -- putney that i was introduced. even as he handed it to me, i think he must have known he was opening the door to very difficult questions. those questions strolled right in. charlie: what haven't you done? what questions have you not

answered through photography for yourself? sally: working on a project. i touched on it a little bit in the book. it is all devoted to gigi. the testimonial perhaps and her portents to me. -- importance to me. i'm working on the legacy of slavery in the south. profound. i'm focusing on the nature of what at the slaves alive, what cap their hopes alive -- kept their hopes alive. charlie: how will you do this? sally: using i have an answer but i -- you think i have an answer, i don't quite know yet.

he was going to a swamp that offered refuge to desperate slaves because they wouldn't track them into the swamp. charlie: fear of alligators? sally: fear of everything. now they have discovered these whole villages. i'm photographing those. it is fascinating. the question is how slavery affected the south? it is a large topic. photographing little churches. the importance of religion. charlie: and the courthouse? sally: that is a good idea. charlie: are you serious? about a certain kind of justice?

sally: something like that. and the night sky. surely that was of critical importance to escape. i'm just rambling. who knows? charlie: you have look at death and decay so much. do you feel any sense of mortality and rushing to finish so many things? sally: do i ever. all i'd have to do is look in the mirror. charlie: what do you see when you look in the mirror? sally: i'm shocked every time i do. charlie: how would you like to be on television for 25 years? sally: i can only imagine. [laughter] it's bad enough for 25 minutes. [laughter]

that cannot be me. charlie: there is an urgency to do a lot of rings. sally: there is. i'm frantic. i don't waste it. i don't waste time. i work all the time. i'm sure you do too. it is the only way. charlie: i was thinking about it. love and work. freud and shakespeare really deserve credit. sally: freud and shakespeare. charlie: love of friends. love of the world around you. at the same tech, it is worth to find your place -- same time, it is work to find your place. sally: yeah.

yeah. charlie: thank you for being here. sally: thank you. charlie: my thanks to my producer at cbs for the hard work on the sally mann conversation and edit. ♪

angie: blatter quits. the man reports he is the center of the corruption inquiry. greece offers a new plan but creditors said they are a long way part. shifting gears. japanese carmakers enjoy rising sales as the u.s. market improves. good day to you. i am angie lau. welcome to "first