A Quote by Mary Ellen Mark
The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen.
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I had a big fight about how to make something come into the real, to make it physical. It sounds really antique, but it's a question of, how do I make this idea happen? You can't just will it into existence. You have to educate, you have to persuade, you have to seduce, you have to do all this stuff to make something three-dimensional and happen. It's not just a concept. It's actually a reality.
I guess my choice of medium depends on how I want to interpret the idea. Sometimes the interpretation works best in a photograph, and then sometimes it works best in a drawing. But most often times, with the work, everything starts with the diorama with the photograph. Then I'm just filtering out ideas and images from the photograph and reinterpreting them in other mediums.
I think everyone at some point comes up against a wall. Curiously, though, if you continue working, you might readdress that idea from another direction. If you didn't try something, you'd never have anything; if you didn't make an attempt to make the work, it wouldn't exist. There have been times when I could not work, and I would just go and sit down in the studio and wait to see what might happen. You can't always just go and take an exotic trip and come back and make something.
When it comes to bringing an idea that God has given you to fruition, don't wait for it to happen again, you have to get out there and make it happen.
When I teach a class I often give the assignment: Photograph someone you love. I ask people to do this so they have a subject about whom they have feelings, a subject that is more than a model, or an object, or a shape, or an idea. In this way, they can judge the result not only by its technical success, but also by how well it describes their feelings.
Genius. It is just attention to something specific. That's all it is. Law of Attraction makes it happen, and so anyone who gives attention to any subject for a period of time will evolve in the direction of that understanding.
The photographer Ruth Bernhard used to tell me that this is like asking somebody how they evolved their signature. It is not something I've ever worked on consciously. I think style is just the end result of personal experience. It would be problematic for me to photograph in another style. I'm drawn to places and subject matter that have personal connections for me and I photograph in a way that seems right. Where does it all come from, who knows?
The idea that a fashion photograph could make you cry doesn't happen. And I'm proud to say that my slideshows can make people cry.
Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.
What matters is not what you photograph, but why and how you photograph it. Even the most controversial subject, if depicted by a sensitive photographer with honesty, sympathy, and understanding, can be transformed into an emotionally rewarding experience.
It's odd, how those things happen to actors. A thing where you think, "I have no idea how to do this," something will happen in your life comes up and you just get it. I don't know how you get it, but actors are pretty extraordinary, in that regard. I think it's fear that happens.
Mostly the subject of the photograph, which can be anyone really, coming down the street - someone that has no idea. "Heroism" in photography, just like in a novel, is for everyone.
I don't think that there's anything that we shouldn't be allowed to photograph, really, unless there's something that's really deeply harmful to the subject in the photograph.
I sometimes say that success just happens. That's not true. You have to make it happen. When I make up my mind to do something, I make sure it happens. You can't wait for the phone to ring. You have to ring them.
Approaching subject matter to photograph is like meeting a person and beginning a conversation. How does one know ahead of time where that will lead, what the subject matter will be, how intimate it will become, how long the potential relationship will last? Certainly, a sense of curiosity and a willingness to be patient to allow the subject matter to reveal itself are important elements in this process.
There's just something about BJ Penn that gets people amped up. You don't know what's going to happen but something is going to happen. He might disappoint you, make you happy, make you cry or make you jump out of your chair, but he'll do something to you.
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