Top 30 Mary Ellen Mark Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Mary Ellen Mark

2. “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

3. “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

4. “Reality is always extraordinary.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

5. “The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

6. “Photograph the world as it is. Nothing’s more interesting than reality.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

7. “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

8. “I respect newspapers, but the reality is that magazine ‘photojournalism’ is finished. They want illustrations, Photoshopped pictures of movie stars.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

9. “Finding the right subject is the hardest part.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

10. “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

11. “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

12. “In a portrait, you always leave part of yourself behind.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

13. “I’m just interested in people on the edges. I feel an affinity for people who haven’t had the best breaks in society. What I want to do more than anything is acknowledge their existence.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

14. “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

15. “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

16. “A great photograph needs no explanation; it functions by suggestion. There is no need to be explicit.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

17. “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

18. “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

19. “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

20. “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

21. “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

22. “Nowadays shots are created in post-production, on computers. It’s not really photography.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

23. “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

24. “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

25. “The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

26. “Usually my ideas for work have revolved around my interest in people, especially people that live on the edges of society.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

27. “I was fascinated by my own prom pictures.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

28. “One of my all-time favorite photographers is Irving Penn. I wish I could have watched him work.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

29. “Im just interested in what makes a photograph.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

30. “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

31. “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

32. “I always wanted to photograph the universal subjects.”

— Mary Ellen Mark

33. “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

34. “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