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" 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

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" 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

" There are some people who become best friends with everyone they photograph. There are people that I really like and admire and respect, but in a way I think it's better to keep a distance. I think you get better pictures of people that you don't know very well. "

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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

" 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

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

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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

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

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

" 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

" 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

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

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'm just interested in what makes a photograph. "

Mary Ellen Mark

" Reality is always extraordinary. "

Mary Ellen Mark

" 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

" I'm a documentary photographer. That's what I've always wanted to be; that's where my heart and soul is. "

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

" 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

" 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

" 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 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

" 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

" 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. "

Mary Ellen Mark

Different Cultures

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

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 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