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" At the beginning of my career, as a boy from Peru in London, suddenly discovering British culture and society, I looked so much at the work of the photographers Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson, which seemed to represent a wonderful vanished grandeur of my new country. "

Mario Testino

Work

Society

Culture

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

Mario Testino

Gun

Magic

" My favourite subjects at school were algebra and logic: making a big problem into something small. "

" 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. "

" I do a lot of decision making before each shoot. It's a luxury to be able to choose what you do. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Some things happen by accident - embrace them. "

" 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. "

" I said to my mother, 'When you see my name in 'Vogue,' I will have arrived.' "

" When I see Kate Moss out and about, I think she looks more beautiful than when her hairdresser and make-up artist try and make her look like something else. And I remember when Madonna first asked Versace to book me to shoot a campaign with her, she came to see me wearing hardly any make-up, and she looked incredible. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Mario Testino

Photography

Suit

" When you're nice, people like you and will want to work with you. But it can mean that they take you for granted. "

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

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

" 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. "

Mario Testino

Influence

Playing