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" Looking at my own prom photograph reminds me of how significant that moment was - and how fleeting life is. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Me
My Own
Own
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" 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 most interested in finding the strangeness and irony in reality. That's my forte. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Finding
Reality
Most
" Usually my ideas for work have revolved around my interest in people, especially people that live on the edges of society. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Ideas
Work
Society
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Love
Time
Walk
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Children
Environment
Experience
" 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
" 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 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'm just interested in what makes a photograph. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Makes
Interested
Photograph
" 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 have an incredible relationship with dogs. I'm kind of a dog-whisperer. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Relationship
Dogs
Incredible
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
See
Looking
Children
" I work in colour sometimes, but I guess the images I most connect to, historically speaking, are in black and white. I see more in black and white - I like the abstraction of it. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Black
Black And White
See
" 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
" A lot of people who don't have anything collect dogs; it's kind of a symbol of having something. "
Mary Ellen Mark
People
Something
Kind
" Sometimes I work on film sets. I've done this for 40 years. I always wanted to photograph on the set of an Ingmar Bergman film. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Done
Work
Sometimes
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
School
Strong
Wild
" 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
" 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
" One of my all-time favorite photographers is Irving Penn. I wish I could have watched him work. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Him
Work
Wish
" You don't need to retouch if you know how to light. "
Mary Ellen Mark
You
Need
Light
" Photograph the world as it is. Nothing's more interesting than reality. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Reality
Interesting
Nothing
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Great
Picture
Opportunity
" 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. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Different Cultures
Just
Country
" I would die if I had to be confined. I don't want to feel that I'm missing out on experiencing as much as I can. For me, experiencing is knowing people all over the world and being able to photograph. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Die
World
People
" 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'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 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