"Mark was living in Turkey[1] as a Fulbright Fellow when she photographed this girl. 'It's obviously a very seductive gesture,' she says of the girl's stance. 'She's almost a woman.' The contradiction between the girl's simple, childish clothing and her fashion model's pose and knowing expression give this picture an unsettling erotic tension. Many of Mark's images feature children struggling to fit into adult roles they don't fully understand." SOURCE
The Photo That Made Me: Mary Ellen Mark, Trabzon, Turkey, 1965
TIME LightBox talks to Mary Ellen Mark as part of our series “The Photo That Made Me”, in which photographers tell us about the one photograph they made that they believe jump-started their career, garnered them international attention, or simply reflected their early interest in photography.
In 1965, I was in Trabzon in eastern Turkey on a Fulbright scholarship. I would get up every morning and walk around the streets and look for photographs. One day, I came across this beautiful young girl, Emine. She was wearing a very babyish dress and a bow in her hair. I photographed her, and she invited me to come to her home.
At her home, her mother gave me some tea and we went to the back area of her house where I took this picture. She just posed for me like that, I didn’t tell her what to do.
I don’t like to photograph children as children. I like to see them as adults, as who they really are. I’m always looking for the side of who they might become. Emine was being very seductive in her own nine-year-old way. It’s interesting to me that she would show me that side of herself.
A few years ago, I went back to Istanbul for the first time since my Fulbright. I was thinking I would love to find Emine. A local newspaper in Istanbul published the picture, and we found her through her daughter. It turns out that Emine ran off a few years after I took this photograph – at age 16 – with her boyfriend and got married. She now lives in a town not far from Istanbul with her husband, the same person.
I’m currently working on a book for Aperture on Tiny, a girl from my previous book, and my husband Martin Bell’s film Streetwise. Tiny is a young prostitute from Seattle whom I’ve photographed and Martin has filmed for more than 30 years. At the same time, Martin is making a film about her and her ten children. Going back is something that’s always fascinating to me. I would have liked to photograph Emine again.
As told to Ye Ming, a contributor to TIME LightBox.
Not many people know that Mark’s photographic career began in Turkey in 1965, when she traveled around the country on a Fulbright scholarship. Her photos “Beautiful Emine,” a portrait of a nine-year-old girl from Trabzon wearing a very babyish dress and yet acting like an adult in front of the camera, and “The man who won the moustache contest,” taken in Istanbul, helped jump-start her career and were both included in her first book, “Passport,” published in 1974
Mary Ellen's passport photo
Mary Ellen Mark, photographer, born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US 20 March 1940; died New York City, New York25 May 2015.
She died aged 75 after suffering from myelodysplastic syndrome, a disease that affects bone marrow and blood, was one of the great documentary photographers of recent times.
“I think photography is closest to writing, not painting,” she once said, “because you are using this machine to convey an idea.” She described her approach to her subjects: "I’ve always felt that children and teenagers are not "children," they’re small people. I look at them as little people and I either like them or I don’t like them. I also have an obsession with mental illness. And strange people who are outside the borders of society." Mark also said, "I’d rather pull up things from another culture that are universal, that we can all relate to….There are prostitutes all over the world. I try to show their way of life…" and that "I feel an affinity for people who haven't had the best breaks in society. What I want to do more than anything is acknowledge their existence".
In 2014, Mark was awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Photography by the World Photography Organization at the Sony photography awards in London and lifetime achievement award from George Eastman House in New York. “I care about people and that’s why I became a photographer,” she once said. Her empathy showed through in all her work.
Her husband Martin Bell (born January 16, 1943) the American film director best known for such films as Streetwise and American Heart survives her.
Mavi Boncuk |
Mark was born and raised in Elkins Park in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and began photographing with a Box Brownie camera at age nine. She attended Cheltenham High School, where she was head cheerleader and exhibited a knack for painting and drawing. She received a BFA degree in painting and art history from the University of Pennsylvania, in 1962. After graduating she worked briefly in the Philadelphia city planning department before returning for a Masters Degree in photojournalism at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, which she received in 1964. The following year, Mark received a Fulbright Scholarship to photograph in Turkey for a year, from which she produced her first book, Passport (1974)[1]. While there, she also traveled to photograph England, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain.
After her stint in Turkey, Mark moved to New York, where she began photographing on assignment for magazines like Look, Life, New York, and The New Yorker, often turning her lens on people in adverse circumstances. After photographing film stills on the set of Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest, she returned to the women’s maximum-security ward of the Oregon State Mental Institution — where the movie was filmed — to interview and photograph the women confined to the ward. Later, she traveled to India to photograph brothels, and, in the late '80s, began photographing Tiny — a 13-year-old prostitute living on the streets of Seattle — while on assignment photographing runaway teenagers for Life magazine.
Mary Ellen Mark's [2]first published book featuring a collection of early photographic work from 1963 to 1973.
[1] Passport. New York: Lustrum Press, 1974. ISBN 9780912810140.
[2] A marvelously candid and honest documentation of the people of Turkey was captured on camera by Mary Ellen Mark as she made her way throughout the cities and small towns of this country. The recipient of a Fuibright grant, she toured extensively over a period of six months; the photographs with which she returned rank as an important achievement as to her ability and capability as a highly imaginative and competent photographer who confirmed the committee's okay to extend her a grant. Mary Ellen Mark is a torrid combination of youthful energy and curiosity plus an innate sense of perception that enables her to see and "frame" the scene or subject before her almost immediately.SEE MORE
"Mark photographed this debonair man sitting with his friends on a street in Istanbul. 'I saw him and shot a few frames. Someone there spoke English, and said he'd won the moustache contest--but they may have been joking with me.' What is compelling about the picture is the man's air of casual confidence, punctuated by the rakish angle of his hat, his elegant slouch, and his proudly pointed facial decoration." SOURCE
Turkish Immigrants, Istanbul, Turkey, 1965
Two Children, Izmir,Turkey, 1965
"Mark encountered these two children on a path in Izmir, Turkey. 'Some pictures work simply because of an accident,' Mark explains. In this case, the gust of wind that swirls up the girl's skirt completes a complex composition and an emotional moment--the girl, distracted, strides towards the camera while the boy behind her seems to want to turn and walk away down the receding, rutted lane."SOURCE