Mary Ellen Mark is an internationally acclaimed photographer who has long been fascinated by the complex relationships between people and animals—as she puts it, "the anthropomorphic quality of animals, and the animalistic quality of man." This fascination has lured her again and again to Mexico and India, two countries that, despite their many differences, share "a primal force . . . that makes the relationship between man and beast even more obvious. There is a more fundamental and intimate working relationship between the people and animals, and this relationship is something I am drawn too and try to convey in many of my photographs."
Man and Beast presents an extended photo essay comprising images from Mexico and India that span some forty years. Many of the Indian images were taken while Mark was working on her classic book Indian Circus (1983), but most of the photographs have never been previously published. Infused with an unsentimental poignancy and a fully intentional anthropomorphism, Mark's photographs of animals, circus performers, children, and others are sometimes ironic, occasionally unsettling, but always remarkably engaging. Accompanying the images are a photographer's statement and a conversation between Mark and Melissa Harris, editor-in-chief of Aperture Foundation, covering Mark's lifelong passion for animals, her experiences photographing them in circuses with their trainers, and her efforts to portray the humanity of animals and the lurking beast within humans.

Man and Beast: Photographs from Mexico and India (Southwestern & Mexican Photography Series, The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University)

Arts & Photography

Mark, Mary Ellen

Photography & Video

University of Texas Press

Documentary project on the prostitutes of Falkland Road, Bombay. Originally shot as a photo-essay for Geo magazine, which deemed it too raw for American audiences. It was picked up by Stern and run in September 1981. The book came out the same year. Photographs, introduction, and captions by Mary Ellen Mark. 17 pages + 65 color plates; 10.25 x 11.25 inches. The photographer's third book.

Falkland Road: Prostitutes of Bombay : photographs and text

KNOPF

Mark's extended photo essay on the prostitution district of Bombay is one of the landmarks of color photojournalism. Small half-inch tear at base of spine. Slight scuffing and fading to cover. Interior and photographs are clean and unmarked.

Falkland Road

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Presents the positive ways in which the act of holding a child can influence better behavior, and covers children of all ages, divorce, and two-career &amp; households

Holding Time

Self-Help

Welch, Martha G.

Relationships

Simon&Schuster

Acclaimed American documentary photographer Mary Ellen Mark made her first iconic photographs when living in Turkey on a Fulbright Fellowship in the mid-1960s. Her pictures of Bombay brothels, shot in the late 1970s, were published in 1981 in Falkland Road, a book that became legendary and confirmed her status as one of the most prominent and provocative documentary photographers working today. This book presents for the first time a selection of the strongest pictures of Mark's forty-year career, drawing from emblematic series such as "Falkland Road," "Indian Circus," and "Twins," as well as many previously unpublished images. The photographs are accompanied by an introduction by Weston Naef and a text by Mark that provides context and behind-the-scene anecdotes. Together her images and words provide intimate insights into the lives of others, presenting compelling stories of human strength and suffering.

Mary Ellen Mark: Exposure

Naef, Weston

Individual Artists

Phaidon Press

Passport

Lustrum Pr

An interview with the photographer accompanies photographs of famine victims at a relief camp in Ethiopia, prostitutes in India, and children with cancer at a summer camp

The Photo Essay (Photographers at Work)

Smithsonian Inst. Pr.

Mary Ellen Mark here pairs images of the world's homeless and alienated with portraits of world-famous actors, musicians, writers, and other celebrities. The differences are palpable. Studiously posed yet comfortable with the camera, icons such as Jodie Foster, John Irving, Lillian Gish, Johnny Depp, and Francois Truffaut fill each frame with an invulnerable gaze. In contrast, impoverished children in Ireland, Texas, or James Bay, Canada, seem unreachable both in their social and geographic removal and in their alarming calm. Despite vastly different lives, subtle correspondences of mood and theme emerge in the paired images: Boy George self-consciously folds his hands in prayer, a gesture echoed on the previous page by a sincerely reverent Indian girl standing in the Ganges. A homeless Irish boy seems as proud in his solitude as Kevin Costner in the persona of Wyatt Earp. Whether of stars posing as outcasts or a Vietnamese circus performer assuming the imperious posture of a star, the photographs of Mary Ellen Mark resonate singly, in pairs, and as a sequence, haunting viewers with their depictions of lives far removed from everyday existence.

PORTRAITS (Motta Photography)

Smithsonian

In The Photography Workshop Series, Aperture Foundation works with the world's top photographers to distill their creative approaches, teachings and insights on photography—offering the workshop experience in a book. The goal is to inspire photographers of all levels who wish to improve their work, as well as readers interested in deepening their understanding of the art of photography. Each volume is introduced by a student of the featured photographer. In this book, Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015)—well known for the emotional power of her pictures, be they of people or animals—offers her insight on observing the world and capturing dramatic moments that reveal more than the reality at hand. Through words and pictures, she shares her own creative process and discusses a wide range of issues, from gaining the trust of the subject and taking pictures that are controlled but unforced, to organizing the frame so that every part contributes toward telling the story.

Mary Ellen Mark on the Portrait and the Moment: The Photography Workshop Series

Aperture

The high school prom is an American tradition, a rite of passage, and one of the most important rituals of youth in this country. The internationally recognized documentary photographer Mary Ellen Mark took on the extraordinary challenge of working with the Polaroid 20x24 Land camera to produce this fascinating look at dozens of young people from a diverse range of backgrounds on this memorable night in their lives.Traveling across the United States to complete the project from 2006 to 2009, Mark photographed prom-goers at thirteen schools from New York City to Charlottesville, Virginia, to Houston to Los Angeles. Mark’s husband, the filmmaker Martin Bell, collaborated with her on the project to produce and direct a film, also called Prom, featuring interviews with the students about their lives, dreams, and hopes for the future. A DVD of the film is packaged with the book. The 127 large-format photographs are reproduced in rich detail, and quotations from the student interviews punctuate the book. Some of the students’ statements are comical, while others are deeply touching. The result is a captivating and revealing document of American youth at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Prom

J.paul Getty Museum

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Books by Mark, Mary Ellen