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" You don't need to retouch if you know how to light. "
Mary Ellen Mark
You
Need
Light
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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
" 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
Way
Country
Different Cultures
" 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
" 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
" 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 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 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'm staying with film, and with silver prints, and no Photoshop. That's the way I learned photography: You make your picture in the camera. Now, so much is made in the computer... I'm not anti-digital; I just think, for me, film works better. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Me
Think
Picture
" 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
" 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
" 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 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
Me
Never
Curiosity
" 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
" 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 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
" 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
" 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'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'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
Feel
Best
Want
" 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
Worry
Stop
Beautiful
" 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
" 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 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
Country
Prom
Think
" Nowadays shots are created in post-production, on computers. It's not really photography. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Photography
Shots
Computers
" 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
" One of my all-time favorite photographers is Irving Penn. I wish I could have watched him work. "
Mary Ellen Mark
Him
Work
Wish
" 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
" 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
" 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