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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 -
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
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You don't need to retouch if you know how to light.
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 -
Looking at my own prom photograph reminds me of how significant that moment was - and how fleeting life is.
Mary Ellen Mark -
One of my all-time favorite photographers is Irving Penn. I wish I could have watched him work.
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'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
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I'm not against digital photography. It's great for newspapers. And there are photographers doing great work digitally. When they use Photoshop as a darkroom tool, that's fine, too. But at this point of my life, after so many years, I don't really want to change, and I still love film.
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 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 -
The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life.
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 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
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I respect newspapers, but the reality is that magazine 'photojournalism' is finished. They want illustrations, Photoshopped pictures of movie stars.
Mary Ellen Mark -
I have an incredible relationship with dogs. I'm kind of a dog-whisperer.
Mary Ellen Mark -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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
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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 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 -
Reality is always extraordinary.
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