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

Mary Ellen Mark

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" You don't need to retouch if you know how to light. "

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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

" 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. "

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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. "

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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

" Reality is always extraordinary. "

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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

" 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 And White

" The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life. "

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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

" 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. "

Mary Ellen Mark

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

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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. "

Mary Ellen Mark

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

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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