Mary Ellen Quotes & Sayings

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. — Mary Ellen Mark

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

Southerners have been known to stay over the Fourth and not get home before Thanksgiving. Some oldtimers take in overnight guests and keep them through three generations. — Mary Ellen Snodgrass

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

Christmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind. — Mary Ellen Chase

Cattle grazing on public lands is heavily subsidized by the federal government, so yes, all of us taxpayers are helping to pay for tremendous environmental degradation. — Mary Ellen Hannibal

Was the human nature of the Son of Mary changed into the divine nature of the Son of God? No; the two natures were mysteriously blended in one person - the man Christ Jesus. In — Ellen G. White

Say a Hail Mary for me. I could use some forgiveness. — Ellen Hopkins

Never read anything that you wouldn't want to read out loud - - to your mother. — Mary Ellen Edmunds

What I'm trying to do is make photographs that are universally understood ... that cross cultural lines. I want my photographs to be about the basic emotions and feelings that we all experience. — Mary Ellen Mark

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. — Mary Ellen Mark

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

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'm interested in reality, and I'm interested in survival. I'm interested in people who aren't the lucky ones, who maybe have a tougher time surviving, and telling their story. — 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

To lovers of the long and intricate history of language the disuse and final death of certain words is a matter of regret. Yet every age bears witness to the inevitableness of such loss. — Mary Ellen Chase

Whatever laudable qualities the English may possess in their selection, preparation, and consumption of food, elegance, originality, diversity, and imagination are not among them. — Mary Ellen Chase

a good recipe in the hands of a bad chef is still distasteful! A good chef must have a discriminating palate, and a good band director must have a discerning ear — Mary Ellen Cavitt

Big voice, big heart - Mary Ellen Wessels is a pleasure to hear. — Fred Small

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

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. — Mary Ellen Mark

A lot of times, when I go back to books I loved when I was young, I don't quite understand what it was that I loved about them. Rereading 'The Secret Garden,' I felt a lot like Mary feels when she visits her garden. — Ellen Potter

I have an incredible relationship with dogs. I'm kind of a dog-whisperer. — Mary Ellen Mark

To Michael Soule's three C's-cores, carnivores, and corridors-Foreman added "three W's: wilderness, wildways, and my favorite word in the English language, wildeor, which is Middle English and means 'self-willed animal.' The ancient people who saw animals as self-willed and the land as self-willed had respect for the earth. — Mary Ellen Hannibal

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

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. — Mary Ellen Mark

I always wanted to photograph the universal subjects. — Mary Ellen Mark

The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen. — Mary Ellen Mark

I would die if I had to be confined. I don't want to feel that I'm missing out on experiencing as much as I can. For me, experiencing is knowing people all over the world and being able to photograph. — Mary Ellen Mark

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

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? — Mary Ellen Mark

The difficulty with color is to go beyond the fact that it's color ? to have it be not just a colorful picture but really be a picture about something. It's difficult. So often color gets caught up in color, and it becomes merly decorative. Some photographers use it brilliantly to make visual statements combining color and content; otherwise it is empty. — 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 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

Every photograph is the photographer's opinion about something. It's how they feel about something: what they think is horrible, tragic, funny. — Mary Ellen Mark

The greatest danger in any argument is that real issues often clouded by superficial ones, that momentary passions may obscure permanent realities. — Mary Ellen Chase

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. — Mary Ellen Mark

I'm just interested in people on the edges. I feel an affinity for people who haven't had the best breaks in society. I'm always on their side. I find them more human, maybe. What I want to do more than anything is acknowledge their existence. — Mary Ellen Mark

The sweet reward for preparation often does not come in the youthful twenties or staid thirties. It arrives - with accrued interest - in the mature years. — Mary Ellen Snodgrass

I was fascinated by my own prom pictures. — Mary Ellen Mark

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

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 not sure which came first, the phone call or the sense of being strangled in my sleep. The choking sensation, as if all breathing on my part must cease, is still vivid in my mind. The feeling engulfs me and I am lying in bed all over again. I feel my throat constricting, intense pressure bearing down on me that I cannot escape. I push away at nothing. I flail and scream, but no sound escapes as my throat is squeezed shut, not by some actual physical hands clasped around my neck but from some nameless danger lurking just as real around me. I gasp for air, seeking somehow to gulp in one long breath that might see me through until I can breathe again. But that breath won't come, and I feel certain that I will perish in an instant, without even a cry on my part. — Mary Ellen Bramwell

I was always observing. Even while talking, living, going through every motion, I was watching myself and the situation. That's a writer. Always observing. — Mary Ellen Hannibal

In a portrait, you always leave part of yourself behind. — 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

I think you reveal yourself by what you choose to photograph, but I prefer photographs that tell more about the subject. There's nothing much interesting to tell about me; what's interesting is the person I'm photographing, and that's what I try to show. [ ... ] I think each photographer has a point of view and a way of looking at the world ... that has to do with your subject matter and how you choose to present it. What's interesting is letting people tell you about themselves in the picture. — 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 street photographer, but I'm interested in any ironic, whimsical images, and there's something very romantic about a circus. — Mary Ellen Mark

Christmas is not a date. It is a state of mind. — Mary Ellen Chase

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. — Mary Ellen Mark

Meditation leads you to your spiritual information, and takes you on a journey of getting to know yourself and your creations. — Mary Ellen Flora

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

I love to fly. It's just you're alone, there's peace and quiet, nothing around you but clear blue sky. No one to hassle you. No one to tell you where to go or what to do. The only bad part about flying is having to come back down to the fuckin' world. — Mary Ellen Mark

Of all the excellent teachers of college English whom I have known I have never discovered one who knew precisely what he was doing. Therein have lain their power and their charm. — Mary Ellen Chase

I'm just interested in what makes a photograph. — 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

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

In every successful still photographic project that I have completed, there has always been a turning point in the story where I felt that perhaps I was working on something that could be very special. — Mary Ellen Mark

Bringing up teenagers is like sweeping back ocean waves with a frazzled broom-the inundation of outside influences never stops. Whatever the lure-cars, easy money, cigarettes, drugs, booze, sex, crime-much that glitters along the shore has a thousand times the appeal of a parent's lecture. — Mary Ellen Snodgrass

Your inner voice and the spiritual guidance...will lead you to your goal. — Mary Ellen Flora

It's just a matter of who you are and how you talk to people. Your subjects will trust you only if you're confident about what you're doing. It really bothers me when photographers first approach a subject without a camera, try to establish a personal relationship, and only then get out their cameras. It's deceptive. I think you should just show up with a camera, to make your intentions clear. People will either accept you or they won't. — Mary Ellen Mark

Between the beach and the big breaking waves about a quarter mile off was a stretch of bumpy, glistening reef, its usual blanket of water pulled back by a celestial hand. — Mary Ellen Hannibal

A great photograph needs no explanation; it functions by suggestion. There is no need to be explicit. — Mary Ellen Mark

I'm most interested in finding the strangeness and irony in reality. That's my forte. — Mary Ellen Mark

Finding the right subject is the hardest part. — 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

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. — Mary Ellen Mark

Reality is always extraordinary. — Mary Ellen Mark

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. — 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

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

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

A plaque hanging on the wall of my home invites me to remember where I came from-each day. It reads, "No matter if a tree grows to more than a thousand feet in height, each leaf, each day, must return to its roots for nourishment." — Mary Ellen W. Smoot

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. — Mary Ellen Mark

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

I don't see how a woman in documentary photography could have children. I think it's a very difficult thing to do to raise a family, and I have enormous respect for people who do it. I'd hate to do something like that and not be good at it. — Mary Ellen Mark

In the tide pool I was riveted by fat pink sea stars sitting like satisfied gangsters and seemingly unconcerned by their exposure; gulls would peck at them but the sea stars simply grew replacement limbs. — Mary Ellen Hannibal

Even one's yesterdays could not continue to stir and move in a man's mind unless there were a future for those yesterdays to make. — Mary Ellen Chase

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

We learned. Some of the things we learned left scars. — Mary Ellen Johnson

Television gives you the opportunity to create more of an ongoing camaraderie with everyone you're working with. — Mary Ellen Trainor

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

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 have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth, and Mary Ellen was proof that even in the Appalachian woods I would not be spared. It became evident that she was a rarity. — Bill Bryson

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. — Mary Ellen Mark

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

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

Grampa took Mary Ellen inside away from the crowd. "Now, child, I am going to show you what my father showed me, and his father before," he said quietly. He spooned the honey onto the cover of one of her books. "Taste," he said, almost in a whisper ... "There is such sweetness inside of that book too!" he said thoughtfully. "Such things ... adventure, knowledge and wisdom. But these things do not come easily. You have to pursue them. Just like we ran after the bees to find their tree, so you must also chase these things through the pages of a book! — Patricia Polacco

Wanting less is probably a better blessing than having more. — Mary Ellen Edmunds

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'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

'The Goonies' is the one that everyone either remembers themselves or their children are seeing now. — Mary Ellen Trainor

I want my photographs not only to be real but to portray the essence of my subjects also. In order to do that, you have to be patient. — 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

Suffering without understanding in this life is a heap worse than suffering when you have at least the grain of an idea what it's all for. — Mary Ellen Chase

So when he asked about getting high, I didn't think, I agreed. We smoked some good California green. Took three tries to put me in the place he said I should be. — Ellen Hopkins