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" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Walk
Up
Scholarship
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" Every photograph is the photographer's opinion about something. It's how they feel about something: what they think is horrible, tragic, funny. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Funny
Photograph
Opinion
" Photograph the world as it is. Nothing's more interesting than reality. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Reality
Interesting
Nothing
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Cats
Trust
You
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Special
Story
Always
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Day
Youth
Future
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Film
Travel
Country
" I wanted to travel from the beginning. As a kid, I used to dream about airplanes, before I ever flew in one. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Dream
Used
Travel
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Streets
Love
Mexico
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Circus
Magical
Film
" I have an incredible relationship with dogs. I'm kind of a dog-whisperer. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Relationship
Dogs
Incredible
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Respect
Family
Good
" When I started out, it was considered very wrong to change an image. There were scandals if someone inserted a sky into a war picture or something. Now it's all about that. "
Mary Ellen Mark
War
Someone
Picture
" The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Mine
Human
People
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Picture
Look
People
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Camera
People
Possibilities
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
School
Life
Moment
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Doctor
Become
People
" What you look for in a picture is a metaphor, something that means something more, that makes you think about things you've seen or thought about. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Look
Think
More
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Feelings
Trying
Experience
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Pictures
You
Street
" 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? "
Mary Ellen Mark
Support
Luck
Love
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Photography
Writing
Think
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Director
Museum
Real
" I'm a street photographer, but I'm interested in any ironic, whimsical images, and there's something very romantic about a circus. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Photographer
Romantic
Street
" I'm most interested in finding the strangeness and irony in reality. That's my forte. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Finding
Reality
Most
" I love to photograph people in their own environment. It offers clues to what's important in their lives. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Love
People
Important
" 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?' "
Mary Ellen Mark
Camera
Best
Picture
" Reality is always extraordinary. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Extraordinary
Reality
Always
" I'm just interested in what makes a photograph. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Makes
Interested
Photograph
" I respect newspapers, but the reality is that magazine 'photojournalism' is finished. They want illustrations, Photoshopped pictures of movie stars. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Stars
Reality
Pictures