Mary Ellen Mark, empathy without compromise
« American photographer (1940-2015), who spent her career closest to the invisible: prostitutes, the homeless, the ill. »
A graduate in painting then photojournalism at the Annenberg School, Mary Ellen Mark published her first essay in 1969 — Ward 81 of an Oregon psychiatric hospital, where she lived two months with the patients (Ward 81, 1979). The project set her method: duration, presence, refusal of shortcuts.
Falkland Road (1981), three months in the prostitutes' district of Mumbai. Streetwise (1983), homeless children in Seattle, became an Oscar-nominated documentary. The Indian Circus, the Hare Krishna commune, Mother Teresa in Calcutta: her subjects converged on those the press treats quickly and that she took time to know.
Married to filmmaker Martin Bell, whom she followed or who followed her by project, Mary Ellen Mark published 18 books and shot for Life, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair. She died in 2015 at 75, leaving a body of work of rare ethical coherence: to photograph never excuses you from coming back.