Mary Ellen Mark Quotes

A good print is really essential. I want to take strong documentary photographs that are as good technically as any of the best technical photographs, and as creative as any of the best fine-art photographs. [ ... ] I don't want to just be a photo essayist; I'm more interested in single images ... ones that I feel are good enough to stand on their own.

I knew from the first moment I picked up a camera, on my first school assignment, what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was going to find a way to travel the world and tell the stories of the people I met through photographs.

I go into every story thinking I'm going to fail. I think about that all the time - I think it's going to be terrible. Every story is like the first I've ever done.

Finding the right subject is the hardest part.

No, I don't think you're ever an objective observer. By making a frame you're being selective, then you edit the pictures you want published and you're being selective again. You develop a point of view that you want to express. You try to go into a situation with an open mind, but then you form an opinion, and you express it in your photographs.

Looking at my own prom photograph reminds me of how significant that moment was - and how fleeting life is.

A great photograph needs no explanation; it functions by suggestion. There is no need to be explicit.

I was thinking about how fleeting and precious life is. Life is also arbitrary. For example, the choices that you make, the luck of being born into the right bed, to parents who support and help you and who love you. That doesn't always happen - and then, what happens when it doesn't?

I could spend my whole life photographing circuses. They combine everything I'm interested in - they're ironic, poetic, and corny at the same time. There's also something about a circus that's magical, sentimental, and almost tragic, like a Fellini film.

In 1965, I was in Trabzon in eastern Turkey on a Fulbright scholarship. I would get up every morning and walk around the streets and look for photographs.

Nowadays shots are created in post-production, on computers. It's not really photography.

I don't think you can develop or learn a way of seeing or a point of view. A way of seeing is who you are, how you think and how you create images. It is something that is inside of you. It's how you look at the world.

I'm just interested in what makes a photograph.

Photograph the world as it is. Nothing's more interesting than reality.

Usually my ideas for work have revolved around my interest in people, especially people that live on the edges of society.

I respect newspapers, but the reality is that magazine 'photojournalism' is finished. They want illustrations, Photoshopped pictures of movie stars.

I'm most interested in finding the strangeness and irony in reality. That's my forte.

I love to photograph people in their own environment. It offers clues to what's important in their lives.

Learning how to use different formats has made me a better photographer. When I started working in medium format, it made me a better 35 mm photographer. When I started working in 4x5, it made me a better medium-format photographer.

I think you have to have a real point of view that's your own. You have to tell it your way. And, I think that it's a mistake to shoot for a specific magazine's point of view because it's never going to be as good. You have to shoot for yourself and photograph [ the way] you believe it..

I saw that my camera gave me a sense of connection with others that I never had before. It allowed me to enter lives, satisfying a curiosity that was always there but that was never explored before.

I don't relax. I can't take vacations. I'm obsessive-compulsive, and I worry with every project that I'm going to fail. When it starts to go well, and I sense that something beautiful and important and meaningful is being created, it's a fantastic feeling, and I find it very hard to stop.

I think the prom is very serious also. It's an American ritual, it's a rite of passage, and it's very much a part of this country.

I really knew when I started photographing I wanted it to be a way of knowing different cultures, not just in other countries but in this country, too, and I knew I wanted to be a voyeur.

I was something of a problem kid. I was emotional, wild, rebellious at school. I'm very touched by kids who don't have advantages; they are much more interesting than kids who have everything. They have a lot of passion and emotion, such a strong will.

I'm not against digital photography. It's great for newspapers. And there are photographers doing great work digitally. When they use Photoshop as a darkroom tool, that's fine, too. But at this point of my life, after so many years, I don't really want to change, and I still love film.

I don't see how a woman in documentary photography could have children. I think it's a very difficult thing to do to raise a family, and I have enormous respect for people who do it. I'd hate to do something like that and not be good at it.

I think photography is closest to writing, not painting. It's closest to writing because you are using this machine to convey an idea. The image shouldn't need a caption; it should already convey an idea.

What I'm trying to do is make photographs that are universally understood ... that cross cultural lines. I want my photographs to be about the basic emotions and feelings that we all experience.

It's good that everyone has an opportunity to take pictures, the chance to be a photographer. Some are good, too. But the bad thing is that it's very, very difficult to take a great picture. Everyone can take a good picture - even a child - but it's hard to make a great one.

I'm a street photographer, but I'm interested in any ironic, whimsical images, and there's something very romantic about a circus.

I always think, 'What does this picture mean? What's the best place to put my camera? Do I have anything extra in the picture, things in the background that will distract? Am I in the basic position that will give the essential things for this picture but not too much?'

I love dogs. I absolutely adore them. When I'm teaching in Mexico, I rescue dogs from the streets and make my students adopt them.

I've always been fascinated by twins. In my forty years of photographing, whenever there was an opportunity, I would take a picture of twins. I found the notion that two people could appear to look exactly alike very compelling.

If I hadn't become a photographer, I would have loved to become a doctor. I would have loved to have done something that actually helped people and changed their lives.

One of my all-time favorite photographers is Irving Penn. I wish I could have watched him work.

I don't like gimmicky pictures; I've always hated them. I like pictures that are very clear and clean, whether you're a great street photographer - somebody like Friedlander or Winogrand or Cartier-Bresson - or whether you're a portraitist, like Irving Penn.

I was fascinated by my own prom pictures.

I wanted to travel from the beginning. As a kid, I used to dream about airplanes, before I ever flew in one.

I'm not much for cats. I'm terrified of mice. I've worked a lot with elephants, and they are extremely intelligent and sensitive, and thankfully, they seem to like me. You never want to get on the bad side of an elephant. And never trust a chimp.

A lot of people who don't have anything collect dogs; it's kind of a symbol of having something.

When you're working on a film, it's almost like photographing paintings at a museum. You're photographing somebody else's world. I just try and interpret it and make it real, and make it what the actors are about, what the director is about, and what the film is about.

If I'm in an unusual or extreme social environment, I always want to know what it's like to grow up there and experience it as normal, everyday life. And I want to know what sort of adults these children are going to turn into.

Reality is always extraordinary.

I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul.

I've always been interested in photographing traditions and customs - especially in America. The prom is an American tradition, a rite of passage that has always been one of the most important rituals of American youth. It is a day in our lives that we never forget - a day full of hopes and dreams for our future.

I remember the first time I went out on the street to shoot pictures. I was in downtown Philadelphia, and I just took a walk and started making contact with people and photographing them, and I thought, 'I love this. This is what I want to do forever.' There was never another question.

I love to fly. It's just you're alone, there's peace and quiet, nothing around you but clear blue sky. No one to hassle you. No one to tell you where to go or what to do. The only bad part about flying is having to come back down to the fuckin' world.

The difficulty with color is to go beyond the fact that it's color ? to have it be not just a colorful picture but really be a picture about something. It's difficult. So often color gets caught up in color, and it becomes merly decorative. Some photographers use it brilliantly to make visual statements combining color and content; otherwise it is empty.

During prom season, I travel around the country with a 20-by-24 camera - which is logistically complicated - and photograph proms. My husband made a film of it.

Every photograph is the photographer's opinion about something. It's how they feel about something: what they think is horrible, tragic, funny.