Mario Testino Quotes

Some people strive for perfection, but I often find perfection boring

My favourite words are possibilities, opportunities and curiosity. I think if you are curious, you create opportunities, and then if you open the doors, you create possibilities.

My pictures are my eyes. I photograph what I see - and what I want to see.

Most photographers go and photograph something that they see, that exists, and that somebody else has created - they document it. But fashion photographers have to create what they're going to photograph. We have to go into the thought and build it up, get a girl, get a guy, get a situation, get the house, get the decor. It's the meaning of the word photography: "writing with light."

It's a choice - there are two different sorts of photographer: those obsessed with the technicalities and those obsessed by the subject.

I started being a photographer because I liked fashion. I liked the idea of dressing up and changing my look. I got earrings, dyed my hair. I would dress like a fashion photo.

I waited a long time, an hour or two, to make that picture perfect. But I wasn't totally satisfied. Then, when I'd finished the shoot, they were about to leave and they suddenly hugged in front of a radiator. I took my camera and that was the picture that ran everywhere - it was spontaneous emotion you could see they were completely in love.

No! Beauty is emotional! That's why plastic surgery never works. Women who want to change their nose, lips, they don't understand that they are doing nothing except erasing their magic.

My favorite type of photography - apart from fashion photography - is journalism, which in a way documents something that exists in a very precise moment, that didnt exist in a moment before and will not exist ever again. This has influenced my work a lot - I usually try to make my images look like they just exist, like no effort was put into it.

I usually try to make my images look like they just exist, like no effort was put into it.

The more I photograph women, the less it is about transformation. Women are beautiful. All that really matters is enhancing that.

Some things happen by accident - embrace them.

My favourite words are possibilities, opportunities and curiosity.

Work is your life, it’s not a rehearsal. You work 7 days a week so you may as well enjoy those days.

Chic is nothing but the right nothing.

Ive been criticised for pretty, smiley photographs, but at least someone is happy! In my mind, I am always giving the image to the sitter.

I was amazed by this person who, even though she had everything, would go to feed the homeless and visit sick children and Aids victims. It was like a fairy tale. Who was she really? Why did she do this? She was trying to find love. I wanted the world to see her kindness, her humility: I think she realised that would be her way.

My favourite subjects at school were algebra and logic: making a big problem into something small.

I had the right amount of detachment to go back and really appreciate what I had grown up with. There’s a particular style that is very Peru that you don’t see anywhere else; it’s got so many different imprints. When you mix Incan minimalism with the heavy, ornate Spanish Baroque, it is very interesting.

A man today has to live with the reality of today. He can no longer live with the reality of 100 years ago. The world's changing so fast. Unless you are prepared to adapt every day, then you have a problem, because the world's not stopping.

As photographers, we have to find our own identity, our own voice, our own vocabulary. And my question all the time is whether this vocabulary is limited, like our own vocabulary that goes from A to Zed, or whether this vocabulary can carry on growing. And to me, I hope that it carries on growing.

The liberation of women has brought a lot of equality to the man, in the emancipation of the man as a bulldog; we can also be soft. It's interesting, because sometimes I maybe push the men a little bit more than the women, because it's a little bit less expected.

I like getting my ideas from the things of now. I am very conscious of the moment, of images that belong to this moment instead of another period. Fashion is really a reflection of our lives. You see women today and they don't do their hair up; they all wear their hair undone. So you have to reflect that in your photography .

In Los Angeles, individuality is very big, because people live in secluded bubbles. People don't walk around. They're very insular, and that allows for people to be whatever they want.

The way men are seen in photography, in fashion, and the way that men look at pictures of themselves has changed in recent years. It is a subject that has come into focus: The masculine image, a man's personal style, changing attitudes to the male face and body.

There is something about Prince William and Prince Harry that brings real modernity to the British royal family. They are also very open, human, and kind, and this is what I have tried to capture in the pictures I have taken of them as well as in my pictures of Prince William and Catherine.