Sally Mills is a self-proclaimed doodler and
hoarder—but we call her a masterful raiser of
the dead.
“My art, as you put it, is purely doodling playing with light, colour, texture and apps!
One day I might even learn how to use my
camera properly!” she laughs.
Residing in the small town of Chorley in
Lancashire, England, Mills recently had to
purchase a ten drawer cabinet to store her
ever increasing collection of decay.
“My first love was dead buildings but when
the weather was poor or time prohibitive I
started shooting dying flowers. In both, the
subtleties of colour and texture fascinate
me, and the way light defines them can be
mouthwatering,” she explains.
We connected with Mills to speak to her
about her unique craft, her art-filled beginning
and to see what draws us so deeply to things
that seem to have the life seeped out of them.
Where did your path to photography begin?
I was brought up surrounded by art in various
forms - my grandfather was an amateur
photographer who took and developed the
most amazing images, recording the time he
spent in India and East Africa during the 1930
and 1940’s, and my mother was a specialist art
teacher, whose passion for her craft stretched
from theatre design to fine art painting. As a
child, I wasn’t conscious of their influence, but
looking back, their enthusiasm for observing
and interpreting, artistically, the world around
them and, in particular, my mother’s love of
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