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All Quotes by author - Mary Ellen Mark
" A lot of people who don't have anything collect dogs; it's kind of a symbol of having something. "
People
Something
Kind
" As a kid, I used to dream about airplanes before I ever flew in one. 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 enter other lives. I knew I wanted to be a voyeur. "
Way
Country
Different Cultures
" 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. "
Film
Travel
Country
" Every photograph is the photographer's opinion about something. It's how they feel about something: what they think is horrible, tragic, funny. "
Funny
Photograph
Opinion
" 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?' "
Camera
Best
Picture
" 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. "
Circus
Magical
Film
" 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. "
Pictures
You
Street
" I don't like to photograph children as children. I like to see them as adults, as who they really are. I'm always looking for the side of who they might become. "
See
Looking
Children
" 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. "
Worry
Stop
Beautiful
" 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. "
Respect
Family
Good
" 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. "
Doctor
Become
People
" 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. "
Children
Environment
Experience
" I have an incredible relationship with dogs. I'm kind of a dog-whisperer. "
Relationship
Dogs
Incredible
" 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. "
Honest
You
Think
" 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. "
School
Life
Moment
" 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. "
Streets
Love
Mexico
" I love to photograph people in their own environment. It offers clues to what's important in their lives. "
Love
People
Important
" I'm a documentary photographer. That's what I've always wanted to be; that's where my heart and soul is. "
Heart
Where
Soul
" I'm a street photographer, but I'm interested in any ironic, whimsical images, and there's something very romantic about a circus. "
Photographer
Romantic
Street
" I'm just interested in people on the edges. I feel an affinity for people who haven't had the best breaks in society. I'm always on their side. I find them more human, maybe. What I want to do more than anything is acknowledge their existence. "
Feel
Best
Want
" I'm just interested in what makes a photograph. "
Makes
Interested
Photograph
" I'm most interested in finding the strangeness and irony in reality. That's my forte. "
Finding
Reality
Most
" 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. "
My Life
Love
Life
" 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. "
Cats
Trust
You
" I'm staying with film, and with silver prints, and no Photoshop. That's the way I learned photography: You make your picture in the camera. Now, so much is made in the computer... I'm not anti-digital; I just think, for me, film works better. "
Me
Think
Picture
" 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. "
Walk
Up
Scholarship
" In every successful still photographic project that I have completed, there has always been a turning point in the story where I felt that perhaps I was working on something that could be very special. "
Special
Story
Always
" I realized all of the possibilities that could exist for me with my camera: all of the images that I could capture, all of the lives I could enter, all of the people I could meet and how much I could learn from them. "
Camera
People
Possibilities
" 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. "
Different Cultures
Just
Country
" 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. "
Love
Time
Walk
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