Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark holds down a double slot in the world of photography. Widely known for stark, unblinking photojournalism, she also maintains a separate career as a production portraitist for the movie industry.

av Steve Lafreniere; Portrait: Roe Ethridge

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became her calling card in Hollywood. Afterward, she went on to shoot some of the most revealing photos ever taken of Marlon Brando, Jodie Foster, Johnny Depp, and many other stars. But Mark is still most regarded for her groundbreaking photo essays. Beginning with assignments for

Annons

and

magazines in the late 60s, her pictures show an unyielding eye for bathos and the jarring details of her subjects’ lives. Her 1979 stay with the inmates of a maximum-security women’s mental hospital resulted in the heartrending

while in

she exposed the severe daily life of a Bombay brothel. Other subjects have included British working-class junkies, Indian circus performers, the Aryan Nations, and a poor black family’s Halloween celebration in the South Bronx. She’s considered a master of the telling moment, and it’s a talent that she uses throughout the entire spectrum of her work—the viewer invariably comes away with the feeling of having experienced her subjects in the flesh.

In 1983, after finishing an assignment for

about teenage runaways in Seattle, Mark and her husband, Martin Bell, documented the subjects again, but this time on film.

Vice: It’s the 25th anniversary of Streetwise. Are you still in contact with any of the central subjects?

Mary Ellen Mark:

laughs

Where does she live?

How about any of the others, like Rat?

I’m a little startled that they’re still alive.

One would think that Tiny wouldn’t have lived through her adolescence.

And ten kids—wow. Was Streetwise an assignment or did you pitch it?

Life

How did you gain their trust? Did you live down in that area?

I especially love the picture of Tiny on Halloween where she has the hat and the gloves on. It’s a beautiful portrait. As a matter of fact, I knew that image for years before I even knew what it was. A friend of mine had it on her wall from a magazine or a book.

Annons

What was interesting was that you were photographing these people who wanted to be glamorous, and here you are aiming a camera at her. Did that become kind of a weird blur?

Were those scenes sort of reenactments of things you already knew about them? Was it scripted? That’s always been a question about the film.

Did Martin shoot a lot of extra footage for the film?

So you became friends with some of the subjects from Streetwise. What about a group of subjects that might be harder to relate to, like the Aryan Nations’ followers?

What are you feeling in a situation like that? Are you completely objective?

Tiny

Have you ever concealed a camera?

What else have you and Martin worked on together recently?

Why do you think that is?

I will say, though, that documentary film has made quite a reentry to the stage in the last five years—but mainly in the form of advocacy or propaganda.

How about in Europe?

I’ve actually seen this work and I think it’s extraordinary.

Well, you know, it’s the keepers of the gates that say that, because there are probably a lot of people in this country who would like to see it.

Speaking of commercial, I’m trying to understand the whole monograph industry. Does the photographer make money from monographs or does the publisher make money?

That does sound like something that will sell very well.

You’re also teaching photography, right?

I assume that most of the students are on the younger side.

Annons

What level are they at when they come in?

So do people go out and shoot things and come back?

Do you ever go out on assignment and come back with nothing? Are there failures, or does it at least turn into something else?

How long have you actually gone without having a camera in your hands?

There is a quality in your photos that gives me the feeling that I’m not looking at a picture but instead that I’m really seeing that person in front of me and I have a relationship with them. It’s very unusual.