Mark (left) at a photography festival, 2011 (credit: Wikimedia)
On Monday, the world lost a renowned female photographer. A female trailblazer in a male-dominated field, photographer Mary Ellen Mark died on May 25 in New York City at the age of 75 (no details yet on cause of death).
Mark showcased her best work when she photographed the dregs of society: prostitutes in Mumbai to the mentally ill women of the prison system to the harsh life of heroin addicts in 1960s London. “I’m just interested in people on the edges. I feel an affinity for people who haven’t had the best breaks in society,” she told the New York Times Magazine in 1987. Completing 17 books, Mark focused on autistic children, hospices, white supremacists of the Klu Klux Klan and runaway children of the 1980s (which became the inspiration for an Academy Award-nominated film, Streetwise).
With a master’s degree in photojournalism from the the University in Pennsylvania in 1962, Mark first worked at a Penn alumni magazine, which lead to her first big assignment photographing the life of heroin addicts in London’s drug clinics. "The thrill was the idea of just being on a street, turning a corner and looking for something to see. It was just an amazing feeling,” said Mark in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1988. “Photography became my obsession.”
Mark’s works have been showcased in prestigious magazines such as Vanity Fair, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Life, New York Times Magazine, and Esquire. Whoever said “a picture is worth a thousand words” clearly was looking at Mary Ellen Mark’s photographs.
You can view Mark's legendary work at her website, maryellenmark.com.