Mary Ellen Mark

"Intimacy is very important in my photographs. Being a woman is often an advantage in enabling me to achieve this intimacy because people, especially strangers, are less threatened by women."
Mary Ellen Mark, excerpted from An American Odyssey 1963-1999, published by Aperture.

ACTIVE BACKLIST

MARY ELLEN MARK: WARD 81
Foreword by Milos Forman. Text by Karen Folger Jacobs.
DAMIANI
ISBN: 9788862080552 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 10/1/2008
Active | In stock

MARY ELLEN MARK: TWINS
Interviews with Mary Ellen Mark.
APERTURE
ISBN: 9781931788199 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 6/15/2005
Active | In stock

MARY ELLEN MARK: PROM [WITH DVD]
CHICAGO
ISBN: 9781606061084 | US $49.95
Pub Date:
Active | Limited Quantity

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

MARY ELLEN MARK: EXTRAORDINARY CHILD
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ICELAND
ISBN: 9789979790143 | US $44.95
Pub Date: 11/1/2007
Out of Print | Not available

MARY ELLEN MARK: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY 1963-1999
Poetry by Maya Angelou.
APERTURE
ISBN: 9780893818807 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 6/15/2005
Out of print | Not available

Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark: Ward 81

Foreword by Milos Forman. Text by Karen Folger Jacobs.
Published by Damiani

In 1975, photographer Mary Ellen Mark was assigned by The Pennsylvania Gazette to produce a story on the making of Milos Forman's film of Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, shot on location at the Oregon State Hospital, a mental institution. While on set, Mark met the women of Ward 81, the only locked hospital security ward for women in the state: The inmates were considered dangerous to themselves or to others. In February of 1976, just before the ward closed (it ceased to exist in November of 1977, when it became the female section of a coeducational treatment ward), Mark and Karen Folger Jacobs, a writer and social scientist, were given permission to make a more extended stay, living on the ward in order to photograph and interview the women. They spent 36 days on Ward 81, photographing and documenting. Jacobs recalls their slow, inevitable assimilation: "We felt the degeneration of our own bodies and the erosion of our self-confidence. We were horrified at the thought of what we might become after a year or two of confinement and therapy on Ward 81." This new hardcover edition adds 10 pictures to the original.

Mary Ellen Mark: Extraordinary Child

Disabled Children In Iceland

Foreword by Margaret Hallgrimsdottir. Introduction by Mary Ellen Mark. Text by Einar Falur Ingólfsson.
Published by National Museum of Iceland

This book accompanies an international traveling exhibition of pictures by the acclaimed American photographer Mary Ellen Mark, made during the summer of 2006, and depicting disabled school-aged children in Reykjavik, Iceland. Most of the 70-some photographs were made at special schools, often during swimming lessons, but some were also made at the childrens' homes. Deeply moving, poignant, sad and joyous, these photographs take us into a reality that adjoins our own, but is very seldom seen. The pride and fear, the sheer effort, that Mark captures in these intensely human studies, can be difficult to bear. In addition to Mark's work, this volume contains 15 photographs of the empty schools by renowned Icelandic photographer Ivar Brynjolfsson, as well as 20 paintings by the children.
Over the past three decades, Mary Ellen Mark has achieved worldwide visibility through her numerous books, exhibitions and editorial magazine work. She is a contributing photographer to The New Yorker and has published photo-essays and portraits in such publications as Life and the New York Times Magazine.

Mary Ellen Mark: Twins

Interviews with Mary Ellen Mark.
Published by Aperture

Mary Ellen Mark, voted by the readers of American Photography as the most influential woman photographer of all time, has made some of America's most iconic images in a career spanning more than three decades. In Twins, her fourteenth publication, Mark turns her acute eye and her heart to the extraordinary bond that exists between these very special siblings.

Mary Ellen Mark: An American Odyssey 1963-1999

Poetry by Maya Angelou.
Published by Aperture

Mark works in a classic documentary mode: her work imprints itself on viewers in the way that only great photography can. --Harpers Bazaar

Recently voted by the readers of American Photography as their favorite woman photographer of all time, Mary Ellen Mark has made some of America's most iconic photographs. She is unsurpassed at shaping both the odd and the everyday into genuinely surprising photographs that subtly yet powerfully challenge our preconceptions or intensify our convictions. Mary Ellen Mark's poetic and at times disquieting photographs form a fascinating portrait of a complex, amusing, and occasionally unsettling country and its people.

Mary Ellen Mark: Prom [With DVD]

Published by Chicago

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.