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It’s not when you press the shutter, but why you press the shutter.

Mary Ellen Mark

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Mary Ellen Mark
Age: 75 †
Born: 1940
Born: March 20
Died: 2015
Died: May 25
Journalist
Photographer
Photojournalist
Screenwriter
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Cameras
Shutter
Shutters
Presses
Press

More quotes by Mary Ellen Mark

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Everyone asks me how I get my subjects to open up to me. There’s no formula to it. It’s just a matter of who you are and how you talk to people - of being yourself.
Mary Ellen Mark
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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
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I always wanted to photograph the universal subjects.
Mary Ellen Mark
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I’m trying to please myself certainly that’s a big criterion... though in a sense, I don’t take images just for myself. I take images that I think other people will want to see. I don’t take pictures to put in a box and hide them. I want as many people to see them as possible.
Mary Ellen Mark
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If you are interested in photography because you love it and are obsessed with it, you must be self-motivated, a perfectionist, and relentless.
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
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A good print is really essential. I want to take strong documentary photographs that are as good technically as any of the best technical photographs, and as creative as any of the best fine-art photographs. [...] I don't want to just be a photo essayist I'm more interested in single images...ones that I feel are good enough to stand on their own.
Mary Ellen Mark
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In a portrait, you always leave part of yourself behind.
Mary Ellen Mark
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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.
Mary Ellen Mark
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I go into every story thinking I'm going to fail. I think about that all the time - I think it's going to be terrible. Every story is like the first I've ever done.
Mary Ellen Mark
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The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life.
Mary Ellen Mark
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A great photograph needs no explanation it functions by suggestion. There is no need to be explicit.
Mary Ellen Mark
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Learning how to use different formats has made me a better photographer. When I started working in medium format, it made me a better 35 mm photographer. When I started working in 4x5, it made me a better medium-format photographer.
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
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No, I don't think you're ever an objective observer. By making a frame you're being selective, then you edit the pictures you want published and you're being selective again. You develop a point of view that you want to express. You try to go into a situation with an open mind, but then you form an opinion, and you express it in your photographs.
Mary Ellen Mark
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I don't think you can develop or learn a way of seeing or a point of view. A way of seeing is who you are, how you think and how you create images. It is something that is inside of you. It's how you look at the world.
Mary Ellen Mark
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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.
Mary Ellen Mark
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Im just interested in what makes a photograph.
Mary Ellen Mark
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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
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I think you have to have a real point of view that's your own. You have to tell it your way. And, I think that it's a mistake to shoot for a specific magazine's point of view because it's never going to be as good. You have to shoot for yourself and photograph [ the way] you believe it.
Mary Ellen Mark