Exposure Mary Ellen Mark

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.

Mark's pictures are a celebration of humanity in its most diverse and eccentric forms. Circuses, gypsy camps, children yearning for adulthood, the poor and destitute are some of her recurring themes. Mark has the unique ability to capture gestures and expressions that translate the intense emotions of her subjects. Compassionate but never literal, her pictures can be humorous, tragic, enigmatic, shocking, and oftentimes all of these simultaneously.

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drawing from emblematic series such as "Falkland Road," "Indian Circus," and "Twins," as well as many previously unpublished images.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-scenes 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 (b.1940) is one of the most famous and acclaimed photographers of today. After completing a graduate degree at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, she began working as a freelance photographer in the mid-1960s and was quickly given magazine assignments. In 1976 she documented the women's maximum-security ward of Oregon State Mental Hospital (Ward 81), and in 1978 she photographed prostitutes in the brothels of Falkland Road in Bombay, and published award-winning books on these subjects. She became a member of the prestigious photographic agency Magnum in 1977, and left the organization in 1982 to work independently. Since the 1980s she has photographed and published books on subjects such as runaway teenagers in Seattle, Mother Teresa's Missions in Calcutta, circuses in India, and twins in America. Mark has received numerous grants and awards, including three National Endowment for the Art grants, two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, the Creative Arts Awards Citation from Brandeis University, the Dr. Erich Salomon Preis Award, the George W. Polk Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and five honorary doctorates, including one from the University of Pennsylvania. Mark is represented by the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City, and the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles. Her pictures have been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and the original Life magazine, among other publications. She lives in New York City.