Mario Testino Quotes

I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists.

What I want to give in the theatre is beauty, that's what I want to give.

A painting has to be beautiful. Even in its grotesqueness.

Images are really powerful. People fall in love with images, and as a way of falling in love with someone because they're like an image.

What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things.

I saw David Lynch's 'The Elephant Man' when I was 15. I was completely bowled over. I found it so beautiful, strange and mesmerizing that I went back to the cinema every night for a week to see it.

I'm much more about the emotion that a photograph provokes out of you and less about how technically brilliant it is.

I love the novel of 'The English Patient'; I think it's a profoundly beautiful novel. I love the movie of 'The English Patient'; I think it's a profoundly beautiful movie. And they're totally different. You accept each on its own terms, and that's kind of the ideal.

I'm fascinated by the way Diane Arbus saw things. She came from this fashion background and then twisted it.

I always loved aesthetics. Not particularly fashion, but an idea of beauty.

There are usually three sections of people who like my work. There are those who like them aesthetically. They see beauty in the images. Second, there are those who like the horror aspect, which is by design, and I like that. Third, there are those who are moved by the historical or political nature of them. They want to talk about them.

A lot of the surreal filmmakers, like David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, or countless other underground filmmakers... Their sense of explosive images have always dominated their films. It's a way to shock the senses, to make them open themselves.

Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgement are permanent.

I'll buy a bottle for anyone who can tell me what makes a picture beautiful!

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.

Loads of people, particularly artists, hate pretty pictures. Now I've never met anyone who didn't like a pretty face.

Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.

The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.

A film you can explain in words is not a real film.

I was also always interested in the aesthetic realm - architecture and that kind of stuff - but music was my first love.

I don't shoot kittens with balls of wool. I don't shoot sunsets. What draws me? Ironic, surreal, unexplained, timely moments.

The talent of the people in Brazil was extraordinary. I thought all of the hair and make-up was really fantastic. The aesthetic there is really something to behold. They just have such a great sense of taste.

Photography appears to be an easy activity; in fact it is a varied and ambiguous process in which the only common denominator among its practitioners is in the instrument.

Videoing, lifting it, prodding it, and five minutes later they might even eat it! That first approach to the naked eye is crucial, so when you see pictures coming through on your social media, it does push you to be a little more creative and raise the bar a little bit higher.

You must photograph where you are involved; where you are overwhelmed by what you see before you.