Quotes from Mary Ellen Mark

When you're working on a film, it's almost like photographing paintings at a museum. You're photographing somebody else's world. I just try and interpret it and make it real, and make it what the actors are about, what the director is about, and what the film is about.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?'

Reality is always extraordinary.

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.