Mario Testino
Mario Testino

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.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

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

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

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

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

Fine artists reflect, and then they act. Fashion photographers - we act, and then we reflect.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

You have to be you. You can't be anybody else. If you speak loudly, and people tell you to speak quietly, you can do it for a little bit, but loud people are loud, and people who are not, are not.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

Being Peruvian means to come from the farthest place possible to get to Europe. Peru is the land of the Incas. It was the capital of South America; it was where the Spanish founded their empire and took over the Inca Empire and made it into a colony of Spain.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

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.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

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.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

I adore being able to go to the Oscars and know every single person at the party afterwards.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

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.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

Charm, I think, is education, really, no? I was educated to be nice to everybody. If you want to be rude and mean, I'm sure your life isn't that nice.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

I am trying to capture the women I photograph at their happiest. That is when they look their most beautiful. But I do understand that you have to make somebody feel completely comfortable in order to bring that out.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

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.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

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

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

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.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

The year has 365 days, and I want each and every one of them to be exciting.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

I have no real training in the history of fine art or furniture; my eye just works by proportions. I react intuitively. In London, it's all about color because the weather is so gray, and in that cold light they look beautiful.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

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.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

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

Mario Testino
Mario Testino

I think my sense of color I have got from my upbringing in Peru.