Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
However spontaneous I hope a photograph will look, I always put a lot of thought into how I can make it happen. The very best pictures are the most relaxed, so a lot of fussing around technically can completely break the spell, and everyone freezes up with nerves.
At the beginning of my career, as a boy from Peru in London, suddenly discovering British culture and society, I looked so much at the work of the photographers Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson, which seemed to represent a wonderful vanished grandeur of my new country.
At one moment, I thought that if I didn't do a picture in a certain way, then it wasn't a 'Mario Testino Picture.' And I've realized that Mario Testino is everything, Mario Testino is whatever he feels like being, because it always ends up looking like me, whatever I do.
Some of my friends say that I only talk about myself. But it is funny: my house is covered in art but with nothing of my own, and when I'm working, I'm only thinking about what the client wants. So I don't see it that way, but maybe it's true. I mean, they are my friends.
There are never any absolutes in the fashion business: one day you may like black, and the next day you like colour. I think it's a good lesson that we should never believe too much in any one thing - because the next day it's out, and if we're stuck to it, we're out, too.
I've always had an affinity with women. It probably started with my mother when I was young, but it was intensified by my sister, Elena, who is one year older than me. I used to hang out with her all the time, and whenever I travelled, I used to buy her clothes and style her.
My original idea was to photograph Princess Diana in her tiara. But then I thought, am I interested in seeing another picture of her as a royal person, or would I rather see what she is actually about? And that's why I decided to do her without jewels, without shoes, without trimmings.
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.
A photograph can make you feel so many different things. When you look at war photographs of Vietnam, or something similar, it makes you feel anguish and sadness and pain. Then in other moments, when you look at Jackie Kennedy walking down Fifth Avenue, that makes you feel glory and richness.
To me, the magic of photography, per se, is that you can capture an instant of a second that couldn't exist before and couldn't exist after. It's almost like a cowboy that draws his gun. You draw a second before or after, you miss and you're dead - not them. To me, photography's always like that.
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.
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.
I find that my entire life has come to me, and things happened without me planning them. You know, I never asked to photograph Princess Diana, and that made me more famous than I wanted. I never asked to photograph Madonna, and that pushed me to another level. There are things that just take you into the limelight.
When I see Kate Moss out and about, I think she looks more beautiful than when her hairdresser and make-up artist try and make her look like something else. And I remember when Madonna first asked Versace to book me to shoot a campaign with her, she came to see me wearing hardly any make-up, and she looked incredible.
At the end of the '90s, I was very bored with the usual models, so I discovered a new generation that impressed me with their fresh look. I still keep working with models like Gisele Bundchen and Kate Moss, and I am still looking for new, interesting faces. Life is about discovery, and you should never stop searching.
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 .
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.
When I had photographed Prince William's mother, I brought along a CD of Dalida, a French singer, that we played on set all day to relax everyone. I decided to do the same thing for Catherine and William. The contrast of the contemporary informal music playing in the beautiful rooms with so much history caused a lot of laughter.
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.
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.
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."