Top 35 Mary Ellen Mark Quotes

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.

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.

I was fascinated by my own prom pictures.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?’

Looking at my own prom photograph reminds me of how significant that moment was – and how fleeting life is.

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.

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

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?

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.

I’m a street photographer, but I’m interested in any ironic, whimsical images, and there’s something very romantic about a circus.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reality is always extraordinary.

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.

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.

I love to photograph people in their own environment. It offers clues to what’s important in their lives.

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.

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

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.

Nowadays shots are created in post-production, on computers. It’s not really photography.

I’m just interested in what makes a photograph.

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.

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.

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

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.