Quotes by Mary Ellen Mark

About Mary Ellen Mark:

Mary Ellen Mark was an American photographer known for her photojournalism / documentary photography, portraiture, and advertising photography. She photographed people who were "away from mainstream society and toward its more interesting, often troubled fringes".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 kno...

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 was fascinated by my own prom pictures.

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

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

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

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'm just interested in what makes a photograph.

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...

Mary Ellen Mark

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

Mary Ellen Mark

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 wa...

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

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

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 respect newspapers, but the reality is that magazine 'photojournalism' is finished. They want illustrations, Photoshopped pictures of movie stars.

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

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

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

Mary Ellen Mark

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

Author Bio

  • NameMary Ellen Mark
  • DescriptionAmerican photographer
  • BornMarch 20, 1940
  • DiedMay 25, 2015
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPhotographer; Photojournalist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Lucie Award; George Polk Award; Dr. Erich Salomon Prize