Mario Testino Quotes

I find that my entire life has come to me, and things happened without me planning them. You know, I never asked to photograph Princess Diana, and that made me more famous than I wanted. I never asked to photograph Madonna, and that pushed me to another level. There are things that just take you into the limelight.

Many people when I started didn't believe I was a good fashion photographer, and probably they still think that.

Oh my God, the graduate shows in London are so important! I still remember going to see John Galliano's graduate collection - that was an event I'll never forget.

I started being a photographer because I liked fashion. I liked the idea of dressing up and changing my look. I got earrings, dyed my hair. I would dress like a fashion photo.

The year has 365 days, and I want each and every one of them to be exciting.

The more I photograph women, the less it is about transformation. Women are beautiful. All that really matters is enhancing that

In the South America of the forties and fifties, everyone was into beauty and glamour and fashion.

My favourite words are possibilities, opportunities and curiosity. I think if you are curious, you create opportunities, and then if you open the doors, you create possibilities.

I don't like a tormented photograph. Something attracts you in them, but the attraction isn't because she has a pot on her head or tonnes of make-up and weird clothes and weird everything.

In Los Angeles, individuality is very big, because people live in secluded bubbles. People don't walk around. They're very insular, and that allows for people to be whatever they want.

The way men are seen in photography, in fashion, and the way that men look at pictures of themselves has changed in recent years. It is a subject that has come into focus: The masculine image, a man's personal style, changing attitudes to the male face and body,

Grunge came from a group of English photographers, and they were documenting their own reality ... I'm South American - we celebrate life.

Being Peruvian means to come from the farthest place possible to get to Europe. Peru is the land of the Incas. It was the capital of South America; it was where the Spanish founded their empire and took over the Inca Empire and made it into a colony of Spain.

Some things happen by accident - embrace them.

Ultimately, I made my range wider because I wanted to suit each publication that I worked for. Talk about reinvention - I'm like the Madonna of photography.

I have become aware on my travels that when a country loses the connection between its history and its traditional dress, something truly precious is lost.

You have to be you. You can't be anybody else. If you speak loudly, and people tell you to speak quietly, you can do it for a little bit, but loud people are loud, and people who are not, are not.

I studied law, economy, international relations, communications, in order to find what I would do. It's the hardest thing, being 17 and trying to find what to do in life. You've explored so little. I'm lucky: My parents let me explore.

Some people strive for perfection, but I often find perfection boring.

A lot of photographers like models to be blank canvases - but bland girls don't influence me. I don't like playing with dolls; I like playing with people.

However spontaneous I hope a photograph will look, I always put a lot of thought into how I can make it happen. The very best pictures are the most relaxed, so a lot of fussing around technically can completely break the spell, and everyone freezes up with nerves.

A lot of fashion photographers will do the same sort of image for many years; it's easier to be successful if you do that.

Some of my friends say that I only talk about myself. But it is funny: my house is covered in art but with nothing of my own, and when I'm working, I'm only thinking about what the client wants. So I don't see it that way, but maybe it's true. I mean, they are my friends.

A fashion photographer is nothing without clothes and hair and makeup. And when I speak to other photographers, a lot of them can't reference a picture by the designer. Me, I say, 'The Balenciaga.' And I go to the shows. I feel like it's my business.

To me, the magic of photography, per se, is that you can capture an instant of a second that couldn't exist before and couldn't exist after. It's almost like a cowboy that draws his gun. You draw a second before or after, you miss and you're dead - not them. To me, photography's always like that.

Work is your life, it's not a rehearsal. You work 7 days a week so you may as well enjoy those days.

I think my sense of color I have got from my upbringing in Peru.

My pictures are my eyes. I photograph what I see - and what I want to see.

I've been criticised for pretty, smiley photographs, but at least someone is happy! In my mind, I am always giving the image to the sitter.

South America was not really that open - you had to fit in, and I didn't fit in. I was different - my tastes, my point of view - were a bit weird, and I found in Britain a sense of calm, that I could just be.

My original idea was to photograph Princess Diana in her tiara. But then I thought, am I interested in seeing another picture of her as a royal person, or would I rather see what she is actually about? And that's why I decided to do her without jewels, without shoes, without trimmings.

I usually try to make my images look like they just exist, like no effort was put into it.

At one moment, I thought that if I didn't do a picture in a certain way, then it wasn't a 'Mario Testino Picture.' And I've realized that Mario Testino is everything, Mario Testino is whatever he feels like being, because it always ends up looking like me, whatever I do.

I am obsessed with people and how to make them look their best.

No! Beauty is emotional! That's why plastic surgery never works. Women who want to change their nose, lips, they don't understand that they are doing nothing except erasing their magic.

I've always had an affinity with women. It probably started with my mother when I was young, but it was intensified by my sister, Elena, who is one year older than me. I used to hang out with her all the time, and whenever I travelled, I used to buy her clothes and style her.

England is the country where I learned my profession. They are the ones that trained me, they are the ones that believed in me.

I have no real training in the history of fine art or furniture; my eye just works by proportions. I react intuitively. In London, it's all about color because the weather is so gray, and in that cold light they look beautiful.

There's a particular style that is very Peru that you don't see anywhere else; it's got so many different imprints. When you mix Incan minimalism with the heavy, ornate Spanish Baroque, it is very interesting.

I never notice a difference between photographing a man and a woman; for me, it's just somebody.

It's a choice - there are two different sorts of photographer: those obsessed with the technicalities and those obsessed by the subject.

I waited a long time, an hour or two, to make that picture perfect. But I wasn't totally satisfied. Then, when I'd finished the shoot, they were about to leave and they suddenly hugged in front of a radiator. I took my camera and that was the picture that ran everywhere - it was spontaneous emotion you could see they were completely in love.

The liberation of women has brought a lot of equality to the man, in the emancipation of the man as a bulldog; we can also be soft. It's interesting, because sometimes I maybe push the men a little bit more than the women, because it's a little bit less expected.

I am trying to capture the women I photograph at their happiest. That is when they look their most beautiful. But I do understand that you have to make somebody feel completely comfortable in order to bring that out.