Mary Ellen Mark (born March 20th in Philadelphia 1940) is an American photographer, known for her arresting images, the content of which is mainly between social photojournalism and portraiture.

She began photographing with a Box Brownie camera at age nine. During high school, she was head cheerleader with a knack for painting and drawing. With the idea of a career in art in her head, she studied painting and art history for a bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania around 1959. She turned professional as a freelance in the mid 1960s when she returned to school at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and received, after her graduation in 1965, a Fulbright scholarship to photograph in Turkey and other countries in Europe for a year. Among a photography scholarship, Mark's other choices included creative writing and filmmaking. In her long career she has tackled many of the most difficult social issues of her time, including homelessness, loneliness, drug addiction and prostitution. She works almost exclusively in black and white. She has contributed to many publications, including LIFE magazine, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. She currently works in her studio in New York, and is under contract to The New Yorker.

She has had three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, won the Robert Kennedy Journalism Award, undertaken a Guggenheim Fellowship, and been awarded five honorary doctorates. She was a member of the Magnum Photos photography agency from 1977-1982.

She maintains that the technical aspects (as well as the social aspects) of her work are very important - as she said in an interview: "A good print is really essential. I want to take strong documentary photographs that are as good technically as any of the best technical photographs, and as creative as any of the best fine-art photographs. (...) I don't want to just be a photo essayist; I'm more interested in single images.... ones that I feel are good enough to stand on their own".

She is currently happily married to photographer Martin Bell and resides in New York, NY.

Photographic collections

• Mary Ellen Mark : Exposure, The Iconic Photographs. Phaidon, 2005. (Mark's own selection of 134 images from 40 years of work).
• "Mary Ellen Mark : American Odyssey, 1963-1999" Aperture
• "Mary Ellen Mark : Twins"
• "Mary Ellen Mark : Falkland Road"
• "Mary Ellen Mark : Falkland Road - 2005"
• "Mary Ellen Mark : Streetwise"
• "Mary Ellen Mark : Hope"
• "Mary Ellen Mark : Mother Theresa"
• "Mary Ellen Mark : Portraits"
• "Mary Ellen Mark : Ward 81"

Further reading

• Mary Ellen Mark : 25 Years. ISBN 0821218387.

External links

• Mary Ellen Mark photographs
• Salon.com Article, March 2000.
• Scotsman newspaper interview, June 2005.

1940 births | American photographers | Jewish photographers | Portrait photographers | Living people

Mary Ellen Mark