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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
In 1965, I was in Trabzon in eastern Turkey on a Fulbright scholarship. I would get up every morning and walk around the streets and look for photographs. Mary Ellen Mark Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
