Mary Ellen Mark Quotes

I guess I've shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures I like.

You scientists are the worst photographers in the world and you need the best photographers in the world and I'm the one to do it.

I just use [the camera]. I just pick it up like an axe when I've got to chop down a tree. I pick up a camera and go out and shoot the pictures I have to shoot.

It's more difficult now, to be a Geographic photographer, than it was when I came along. And it wasn't easy at that time.

I've thought of becoming a photographer! To save my talent as a writer.

You become technically proficient whether you want to or not, the more you take pictures.

The technique of 35mm photography appears simple. One is beguiled by the quick viewing and operation, and by the very questionable inclination to make many pictures with the hope that some will be good.

People think that it is important to learn by assisting the great photographers. I say that is a big mistake. Be happy; just learn from any little guy. Learn how to use the camera - you don't need anything else. You can't be taught the real skill anyway.

There was a camera club at Columbia, where I was taking a painting course. And when I went down, somebody showed me how to use the stuff. That's all. I haven't done anything else since then, It was as simple as that. I fell into the business.

I don't care how they think of it. Some of these people are acquiring some very good pictures by a lot of different photographers.

The camera cannot, but the photographer can.

I read the other day that Minor White said it takes twenty years to become a photographer. I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. I would say, judging from myself, that it takes at least eight or nine years. But it does not take any longer than it takes to learn to play the piano or the violin. If it takes twenty years, you might as well forget about it!

I'm a photographer, a still photographer. That's it.

If the guy behind the camera is not good, the pictures are bad. It's still you, and it's the same lines and everything, but it doesn't work.

As you get older, you have different tools, and you learn to use photography differently.

I know what I like to use myself. I use Leicas, but when I look at the photograph, I don't ask the photograph questions. Mine or anybody else's. The only time I've ever dealt with that kind of thing is when I'm teaching.

I am a professional photographer by trade and an amateur photographer by vocation.

Photography is my one recreation and I think it should be done well.

I'm a very, very basic photographer. The main strength of my pictures, I guess, is the mood and feel I get out of the people that I meet. But technically I don't think I'm very advanced. That never interested me.

Photographers want to reinvent you, to take you somewhere else, to show you in a completely different way. They look at your previous work, and try to figure out what they can do to show a new side of you.

I realize more and more what it takes to be a really good photographer. You go in over your head, not just up to your neck.

There are photographic fanatics, just as there are religious fanatics. They buy a so-called candid camera there is no such thing: it’s the photographer who has to be candid, not the camera.

I'm too impatient to use a tripod.

The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.

I don't roam around with a camera and never did. I took pictures in spurts, for my books, for some assignments or on special occasions. Like people who take out their cameras for Christmas and birthdays. Each time, like them, probably, I feel it’s the first time and as if I would have to relearn the moves. Luckily, it comes pretty fast, like riding a bike.