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Mary Ellen Mark
1.
2. Dates 1940 - 2015
Nationality American
Born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Mary Ellen Mark is a renowned and accomplished photojournalist, whose work has enabled her to witness
extremes of life around the world. Her subjects are frequently in heartbreaking situations--coping with
adverse circumstances such as poverty, physical abuse, homelessness, or drug addiction. Mark's pictures
often focus on interpersonal bonds (including those between humans and animals), but they are not
sentimental. Although her subjects' reveal their vulnerability before her camera, their honesty implies that
she relates to them with tremendous compassion and respect. She readily credits her identity as a woman
as instrumental in enabling her to gain her subjects' trust.
Mark was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA. After studying painting and art history as an
undergraduate, she attended the Annenberg School for Communication. There, she immediately realized
that she wanted to become a photojournalist. Beginning with her earliest freelance assignments in the
mid-1960s and her association with the Magnum picture agency from 1977 to 1982, she earned steady
recognition for her images published in magazines and books. Mark's best-known photography essays
include Ward 81 (1979), a study of severely ill women at Oregon State Mental Hospital; Falkland Road
(1981), an essay on prostitutes in Bombay, India; Mother Teresa's Mission of Charity in Calcutta (1985);
Streetwise (1988), which focused on runaway teenagers in Seattle, Washington; Indian Circus (1993); and
Twins (2003). Since the 1990s, Mark has turned her attention to broader monographs and exhibitions of her
work.
Biography courtesy of Getty
