Mary Ellen Mark Quotes

Each time I arrived in a new city, I'd get lost in the streets and photograph everything that looked interesting, taking nearly a thousand photographs every day. After each day of shooting, I'd select 30 or 40 of my favorite photographs and post them on Facebook. I named the albums after my first impression of each city.

I consider myself very lucky. I'm known for photographing celebrities, but, in a nutshell, my first love is photography.

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

As soon as I had the camera in my hand for the first time, I just fell in love.

Photography was a blessing because it filled my time. If I had to start over, I'd pursue photography - probably to the exclusion of acting.

I was always painting when I was a kid. But then when I handled a camera when I was 17, that was it for me. I loved photography. I would work 4 or 5 hours a day. It was like a calling.

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.

When I first started 'Humans of New York,' I was writing short stories. There were about 50 of them. And, you know, they were a great part of the site, but the photography just started growing so fast that I didn't have time to make them anymore.

Always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It's the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.

Now, when I came on to Washington to begin my job, I was so interested in photography at that time that I really would have preferred to work with Stryker than with my department, which was more artistic if you wish.

Even the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with all due respect to him, are notoriously burned and dodged.

I photograph different people all the time. I like to shoot all kinds of people.

I love photography, I love food, and I love traveling, and to put those three things together would just be the ultimate dream.

I do love acting. But to work as a photojournalist would have been extraordinary.

I can't really envision a time when I'm not shooting something.

I always considered, with every shoot, I was on trial; every time I pick up my camera and start out on the relationship, I am at degree zero. There is no coasting.

The main thing I love about street photography is that you find the answers you don't see at the fashion shows. You find information for readers so they can visualize themselves.

I think the greatest photographers are the amateur photographers who do it because they love it. Arnold Newman is a good example; he is a consummate professional, but he's also an 'amateur' in the pure sense of the word.

I love taking pictures. I'm always the one with the camera!

I realize that I had the best of serious picture journalism.

As much as I love music, in my mind, photography is what makes me the happiest - that's for sure.

I was drawn to street photography because there are pictures everywhere there: a woman holding a dog, a baby screaming to be put in a pram, kids playing punch ball, stores with huge barrels of kosher pickles outside. I wanted to photograph life, and here it was.

To see, and to show, is the mission now undertaken by Life.

I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.

Capturing a beautiful moment in a photo is something I'm very passionate about.