Unit 57: Photography and Photographic Practice

Research of other photographers work

CESCA HAIG

Mary-Ellen MarkMary Ellen Mark was born March 20, 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

She is an American photographer known for her photojournalism, portraiture, and advertising photography.

She first began photographing with a Box Brownie camera at age nine. she has a BFA degree in painting and art history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962, and a Masters Degree in photojournalism from that university's Annenberg School for Communication in 1964.

Her photography has addressed such social issues as homelessness, loneliness, drug addiction, and prostitution. She works primarily in black and white.

Mark became a unit photographer on movie sets, shooting production stills for films including Arthur Penn's Alice's Restaurant (1969), Mike Nichols' Catch-22 (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) among her earliest.

Her photography has addressed such social issues as homelessness, loneliness, drug addiction, and prostitution.

This photograph was taken in December, 1987 when Mary Ellen Mark spent a week following a homeless family for a photography project to be feature in LIFE accompanying an article wrote by Anne Fadiman. The photo is of the oldest child in the family, Chrissy, aged 8. In this photograph you can see that Chrissy is clearly upset by something, she is the main focal point of the image, behind her is a window, not much can be seen outside of it. The picture is in black and white, I think that this makes anyone who is looking at this photograph look more closely at the features of the girls face, they are not distracted by anything else.

Mary Ellen Mark is a portrait photographer, she mainly works in black and white, using classic Kodak Tri-X film.

I like this photograph by Mary Ellen Mark because of how it shocks the viewer, it is of a young girl named Amanda and her cousin Amy. Amanda is the girl stood up in the paddling pool, she is only nine years old yet she is smoking and mimicking actions of someone much older than herself. This image is in black and white, I think this is effective because a viewer isn’t distracted by anything in the background as it is all quite plain and dull, whereas the two girls and the pool are much lighter, drawing your eyes to them. I think that images like this make a viewer want to find out more about the subjects and who they are. Something that I would like to happen with my photography.

I think Mary Ellen Mark is good with her photography because she connects them all up, She photographs different people over a few years. These are a set of pictures of a called girl known as ‘Tiny’ Mary Ellen Mark met Tiny when she was just 13 and has gone back to photograph her throughout her whole life. Mark has offered to help her out over the years and has done the same with a few of her other subjects that she has photographed. I think the relationships that she develops with her subjects help her with her ability to capture peoples emotions, because they know her and are honest with her about what is going on with their lives, this makes the images stand out more and means that people who view the images can get a real understanding of the people in the images. As she photographs people throughout their lives, anyone who follows her photography can see them and how they change throughout the years.