Agencies such as Magnum play an important role in the photographic publishing marketplace. Each has its own way of working and governing itself, but essentially most are set up to generate photographs and sell them to the publishers of magazines, books, and newspapers. Profits are split on a percentage basis with the photographer. As the economics of magazine publishing forced periodicals to drastically cut back their photographic staffs in the 1960s, agencies increasingly filled the gap.

The staff of an agency can act for the photographer by calling magazines and selling them an idea for a story. Gaining an assignment for the photographer, the agency acts as intermediary, making sure the photographer gets paid. If the photographer is working on a self-generated project or is on a long-term assignment such as a book contract, the agency will attempt to place those pictures in magazines worldwide in order to defray expenses and develop additional income for the photographer. Once an assignment has been completed, the photographs become part of the picture library of the agency and are available for resale, thus generating income long afterward.

Magnum is a cooperative; each member has a voice in the decisions and direction of the agency. Photographers also contribute forty percent of their earnings toward maintaining the staff, offices, and library. Over the five years of her membership in this complex organization, Mark came to feel that she would be better off on her own, generating her own work.

She left Magnum in 1981 with four other members (Mark Godfrey, Charles Harbutt, Abigail Heyman, and Joan Liftin) and set up Archive Pictures, which functioned solely as a library for secondary sales of photographs. At the same time, Mark realized that in order to continue successfully with her movie work, she needed an agent who knew that particular segment of the market and could negotiate successfully. She started working with Marysa Maslansky at Visages; Maslansky arranges both publicity and advertising work on films.

Archive lasted until late 1988, when the photographers decided to disband and go their own ways. Some went to other agencies, and Mark came to see that it was time to try working on her own.13

In 1988 she formed her own picture agency--the Mary Ellen Mark Library--with Teri Barbero. Barbero, who had also been in Archive, became director of the library. In this capacity, she began digitally recording Mark's photographs through a custom-developed computer system, which made Mark's twenty-five years of work instantly available. Mark had long employed a studio manager to set up appointments and in general make sure that she had everything she needed.

Mark has used several black-and-white printers. She prefers to work with someone whose printing she admires and in whom she has complete confidence. She gave up doing any darkroom work herself early on because, like many magazine photographers, she realized that time spent in the darkroom is time taken away from photographing.

Mark concerns herself primarily with the original idea and the moment of realizing it on film. She does not want or expect the image on the negative to be modified in the printing. She does expect it to be beautifully printed and to reflect the tonal range present in the negative, as a bad print can ruin the impact of a photograph, she feels: "A good print is really essential. I want to take strong documentary photographs that are as good technically as any of the best technical photographs, and as creative as any of the best fine-art photographs. That's what I want. And certainly a good print is part of it. [This is doubly important because] I don't want to just be a photo essayist; I'm more interested in single images...ones that I feel are good enough to stand on their own."14

Mark's orientation to photography is different from that of a photographer assembling a portfolio of highly personal images for an eventual gallery show and sale. Although she does try to choose assignments in which she has a special interest, the photographs have another function: "I'm trying to please myself; certainly that's a big criterion...though in a sense, I don't take images just for myself. I take images that I think other people will want to see. I don't take pictures to put in a box and hide them. I want as many people to see them as possible."15

Mark trusts her instincts about what works in reportage. Occasionally, she finds an assignment quickly, but usually it takes years before the story is photographed and published. And although optimistic about the chances of publishing a good story, she often finds that wedding a story with a publisher can be a demanding process: "You can always find stories to do...It [a good story] will always find its way into being published. Maybe it won't be published this year, but maybe next year. If you do a great story, there's always a magazine that will publish it...It's a very fickle and changeable business. It's never that easy."16

FALKLAND ROAD: PROSTITUTES OF BOMBAY exemplifies her persistence in resolving these problems. Two circumstances stood in the way of this story on the "caged" prostitutes of Bombay; either could have killed it. Mark lacked both financial backing from a publication and access to the women. Ten years elapsed between the initial idea and its fruition.

Full of prostitutes, pimps, transvestites, and the places they work, Falkland Road is famous for its brothels, which display the women in rooms open to view but separated from the street by iron bars. Though they seem quite available, the only real access to them is through the door and past the madam.

Having first seen the women beckoning to potential customers in 1968, Mark returned to Falkland Road on all her subsequent trips to India. Each time she tried to photograph there, she was verbally abused and pelted with garbage. In October 1978 she decided to make a concentrated effort. Every day she went to Falkland Road and endured both the garbage and insults. In the introduction to her book she wrote: "Every day I had to brace myself, as though I were about to jump into freezing water. But once I was there, pacing up and down the street, I was overwhelmed, caught up in the high energy and emotion of the quarter. And as the days passed and people saw my persistence, they began to get curious. Some of the women thought I was crazy, but a few were surprised by my interest in and acceptance of them. And slowly, very slowly, I began to make friends."17

Mark first was befriended by street prostitutes and transvestites, who are at the bottom of the social scale there. Gradually, she was allowed into the caged houses, and she made photographs there until January 1979. The resulting photographs have nothing in common with the stereotype of the prostitute. Instead, they represent young women, their children, and their customers with great compassion. Her color images were published in STERN and other magazines.

Working in color with a strobe, Mark was hardly unnoticeable, but she was eventually accepted and allowed to stay. She has no formula for getting people to trust her: "I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul, and I think you have to be clear about that."18

Others have commented on Mark's ability to work with people no matter what the situation. Story researcher Prudence Heisler, who traveled with her into American ghettos, says: "She has such an incredibly hypnotic way of working with people that she really captures their attention...I think it's because she's so intent on what she's doing that, for that moment, nothing else exists for her except taking that photograph. It's such an overwhelming kind of commitment...I think people get spellbound. She's also a very direct and honest person...

"Mary Ellen goes straight to the point. She talks instantly about their drug problem, their addiction, their pregnancy, their unemployment, their criminal background. She goes straight to the point, and it's not garbage with her; I think people feel relieved to be with someone who is authentic and direct.

"I think she makes those people feel very special. She kind of gives them the attention that many are desperate for--she is very gentle with people."19

Another story on India--"Teresa of the Slums: A Saintly Nun Embraces India's Poor"--was published in LIFE in July 1980. Mark's long-awaited opportunity to photograph at the Missions of Charity came about as a result of Mother Teresa's receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in the fall of 1979. Because of the crisis in Afghanistan, no writer was available to report on the missions while the photographer was there. This circumstance allowed Mark the freedom to structure her work as she wished and to shoot single images rather than within a narrative structure.

Mother Teresa's Missions of Charity comprise much more than the well-publicized Home for the Dying in Calcutta. There are 158 houses, half of them in India and the rest in 32 other countries. In the area of Calcutta itself the other missions, where Mark also worked, include the "Nirmala Kennedy Center, a home for retarded and homeless women; Shanti Naga [Peace] Village, a leprosy colony four hours by train outside the city; Shishu Bhawan, a home, adoption center, and hospital for abandoned and malnourished children; and Prem Dan [Gift of Love], a large complex with facilities for caring for recovering tuberculosis patients, homeless women, and retarded young boys."20

Mark did most of her shooting at the Nirmal Hriday (Home for the Dying). This hospice is on the grounds of a temple dedicated to Kali, a Hindu goddess of death, destruction, and purity. Thus, the location symbolizes the intertwining of East and West.

Having completed the assignment for LIFE after nearly a month, Mark decided she needed to return to India and pursue her own work in greater depth. However, it wasn't until January 1981, a year later, that she returned. Access to Mother Teresa during the first trip had been very restricted, and Mark continued to have problems in 1981. She talked over the situation with a Jesuit priest, who suggested that she attend church services. As his sermon began, she was astonished to hear him speaking about the importance of photography. Things improved thereafter to the point where Mother Teresa included Mark on her trips to outlying hospitals.

Photographs about dying, leprosy, and blindness can be difficult to look at, yet the love of the nuns and volunteers is evident throughout Mark's images--in a hand caressing the head of a patient, a nun touching an old woman. Other photographs allude to the gentle nature of the houses by describing the surroundings. For example, one photograph of the Shanti Nagar leprosy colony shows a flock of white geese passing between buildings in front of a sister in her pristine habit. Three small floppy-eared goats are also passing and the mottled sunlight silhouettes another person's shadow on a white wall. An image of calmness and purity, it emphasizes the orderliness and beauty of the commonplace.

Pictures made during Mark's second stay in Calcutta rounded out the work she had done for LIFE the year before. In 1981 the story seemed finished--at least for the time being.

Recognizing that a story is complete can be difficult. If the assignment has a definite deadline, a professional must adjust accordingly. This assignment was not fulfilled to Mark's personal satisfaction in the time allotted, so she went back. Nevertheless, she delivered to LIFE a solid piece that satisfied the requirements of the magazine.

Mark says that sometimes she regrets having left a documentary project too soon. On the other hand, the urge to go on and on can also be a problem: "You have to finally say 'well, that's it'...I try to make a schedule for myself on a long project as well as [on a] shorter essay: how long I think it will take me and what I need to do to complete it. So I'm pretty organized about that."21

The need to return to Calcutta and to Falkland Road exemplifies what Mark and her colleagues characterize as her obsession with photography. In one interview she stated succinctly that the relentless drive to make photographs was stronger than she was.22

Mark's friend the photographer Greg Heisler affectionately characterizes her total immersion in her work in his own dramatic way: "More than anyone else I know in the business, [she] is literally obsessed with her work, obsessed with photography, obsessed with the pursuit of her vision, and obsessed with the disparity between what she wants to do and what she ends up doing--the disparity between the fantasy of the assignment and how it ends up turning out. Her obsession with how magazines should run pictures but don't, her obsession with other photographers and how disappointing they can be. I mean she is obsessed with every aspect of photography. The only thing she is not obsessed with is equipment, which is kind of rare because lots of photographers are obsessed with hardware. She is obsessed with PHOTOGRAPHY. She couldn't care less if she were using an Instamatic Type 4. If, in fact, she found that to be really easy to work with, and it seemed to give her quality [she wanted], that would be fine."23

Though her constant quest for excellence makes her continually stand back and appraise her work, when she is actually photographing she exudes a powerful sense of both complete absorption and calm. Focusing entirely on the subject at hand, she is not easily distracted. At one point she compared her need to photograph to drug addiction; in another, more poetic, allusion she described Suman, an acrobat in an Indian circus who "walks upside down eighty feet up in the air...by slipping her feet through successive hoops and uses no net. I thought, she really is an adrenaline addict. I mean, she does this three times a day, everyday, and she could die. But she doesn't think she has to do it. My photography isn't dangerous like that, but I guess I just do it because I have to. It's hard to say why. I like to be in a situation where I can define some sort of absolute feeling."24 In looking for that moment of "absolute feeling," her concentration is complete.

Prudence Heisler comments: "She has found a place to be...There is absolutely no question about what she has to do and what kind of pictures she has to take. She has a tremendous kind of power in that obsession because it is, in some ways, a very tranquil place to be because there is no question."25

In order to find a story Mark reads through several newspapers a day. At times she has hired a researcher to help her look. Generally, her problem is not in finding material but in convincing a newspaper or magazine to let her follow through. She always has many more ideas than outlets. Using the telephone frequently in this search for potential publishers, she often also writes proposals, which she sends along with a photocopy of the original newspaper item. She may submit a particular proposal to magazines in more than one country, but never to more than one in each country. If the idea is rejected, she then approaches another magazine in that country.

Producing a story is very costly: travel, accommodations, food, film, car rental, film processing, printing, and the services of an assistant all add up. The longer a project takes, the more it costs. Often, even if a magazine is interested in a story, it may not be able to bear all the expense. One possible way to finance a story is to work simultaneously for more than one magazine--an American, an English, and a German publication, for example--so that the expenses are all shared, each magazine gets more for less, and three articles are published in different countries.

When such an arrangement allows Mark to pursue a theme that means a great deal to her, she views the assignment as a grant to do her personal work. Her preference for working in black and white narrows the field considerably, so she is doubly grateful for the opportunity to work. In addition to suggesting topics, Mark does, of course, get calls directly from many different publications.

Photo editor Kathy Ryan calls with jobs based on stories being covered in THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE. In choosing a photographer for a particular piece, Ryan considers photographers' artistic strengths--how they will approach a story, how they think, what issues move them--that is, "another point of view...I think of it as almost recording a point of view from the photographer that's beyond the visual point of view. Each story demands very, very different strengths."26

One of Mary Ellen Mark's strong points, Ryan believes, is that "if she's got several weeks to do a reportage, she'll make incredible images. If she's got twenty minutes to shoot a portrait of someone, for example, the kid on death row [Heath Wilkins in "Too Young to Die?"27, where getting access is a major battle to begin with, and there is not going to be a luxury of time, she'll still make incredible pictures."28

For the story of eighteen-year-old murderer Heath Wilkins (published in 1989), Mark was told that he would not be bound or handcuffed, and that she had only a few minutes for the portrait. Arriving early at the prison, Mark asked for a larger room than the one originally designated, in order to accommodate her lights. She set up for a close portrait to emphasize Wilkins's youth. Apparently because the room being used was in a different location, the prisoner was transported in leg irons. There was no time to relight the portrait to show his shackled legs. Mark made a closeup and then, according to Kathy Ryan, told the warden "that the camera had malfunctioned and she had to come back the next day, because we knew we couldn't get a second chance. Basically, through her sheer strength of personality, which is another element of all great photographers--beyond the image--always being able on the scene to make things work their way,"29 she demanded a second day, and she got it.

Peter Howe, picture editor of LIFE, comments: "When you give Mary Ellen an assignment, it's like when you've uncorked the jar and a genie comes out. The minute you suggest a story to her, her mind immediately locks onto that story. She worries over whether this is right or that is right. [She's] almost like a fighter in training when she's started to think about a story. And when she is working on a story for you, that's the only story in the world that is ever going to be printed. It's the only story that exists. There are no other stories, no other magazines, and that's the real plus about her. It's complete and utter commitment to doing what she does."30

When at a site, Mark will call the photo editors regularly to let them know what is going on, to check details one more time, and to discuss the problems she is experiencing. She is often so frustrated while working that she may call and say: "I don't know why I'm doing this," or "I have no idea why I took this assignment." Ryan remarks that "it is like opening-night angst while she is in the middle of a story, like: 'Am I going to be brilliant or bomb?'...She's living and breathing it every minute. I mean, when she's on assignment nothing else matters--nothing."31

In speaking of Mark, Howe concludes that "she's not an egomaniac; she's not a publicity seeker or any of those things. I think in many ways, in the true sense, she is one of the most dedicated people I have ever spoken to. [Photography] really, really is her life, it's air and water. I mean, it's everything that she needs to sustain herself, both intellectually and spiritually...Even for those of us to whom it's incredibly important, there are not many for whom it's THAT important."32

Because it is her life and because her work is made for the public arena, Mark is frustrated by current trends in magazine publishing: "In the day of Margaret Bourke-White photojournalists were supported by LIFE and by THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. Now, the only photographers magazines back are the personality photographers or the fashion people...But for documentary photographers, you don't have that kind of backing. Except for [NATIONAL] GEOGRAPHIC, you don't really have the contract or staff position [as Bourke-White had] on a magazine that's really behind you and that's really going to stay with you and use you again and again. It's strange, but the fashion people and the celebrity people do (like at Conde Nast).

"You have to constantly keep proving yourself and constantly keep suggesting stories. I think now, particularly, it's very tough. People are always blaming picture editors and art directors, but it's not their fault. The decisions come from 'upstairs' in magazines. A good art director and a good picture editor, they want great stories in their magazine--they're really FOR you. But THEY'RE not the people that reject your ideas. Your ideas get rejected by the business side of the magazine, the editorial and business [that is, the word and money] people. The magazines are money-making operations. Documentary photography is essential, but it doesn't necessarily sell. Whereas with fashion, beauty, celebrities, they sell. I think because the economy is in such a bad state, magazines are much more careful now."33

The cost and subject matter of documentary stories intensify the cautious attitude of publishers. These are realistic concerns, and Mark realizes that "it costs a lot of money to do a photo essay because you've got to spend a lot of time doing it. So that's one thing: The magazine has to consider whether they want to spend all this money. Also, it's a risk--it's a story that might be hard to look at. It might offend someone; the advertisers might not like it. All those things go into consideration."34

Peter Howe says one of the biggest changes he has seen in American magazines is that, as their focuses have become narrower, they have been forced to go out and do the stories they want, rather than remain open to the ideas of photographers. Hence, the publishing possibilities for photographers such as Mary Ellen Mark are drying up. Moreover, the narrower focus often goes hand in hand with greater use of artificial sets and formula photography.

In explaining why magazines in countries other than the United States, such as England and Germany, may be more liberal and more willing to take risks, Howe points out that the countries and, therefore, their markets are smaller: "The stakes are much bigger here; there's a much bigger audience, and they are spending much more money...Advertisers are going to be that much more cautious because they have that much more to lose. To a certain extent that translates into magazine publishing inasmuch as we [publishers] are all fighting for the advertising pages that go into supporting the magazines. And therefore, I think, there is a knockdown effect--it is so important to get those ad pages because we're talking about so much money...

"It seems to me that, within the area of photojournalism, particularly in magazines, we have very small victories and very big defeats...The reality is that particularly in magazines (I think the situation in newspapers to some extent is different), most editorial photography finds its way onto the pages as illustrations. There is very little that is finding its way to the pages from the beginning to the end of the story...Really, on the national level, there are two [magazines]: there's us [LIFE] and the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC doing complete stories. You know, TIME and NEWSWEEK and U.S. NEWS do make their forays into that area, but there are not that many, not that many."35

Mark observes: "What's more frustrating than magazines giving less and less space is that they tell you what they want. Not LIFE, but some magazines actually want you to be an illustrator, and I don't want to be an illustrator--I don't enjoy those assignments. You know, I want to have a chance to be a real part of the creative process and not just a technician who clicks the camera."36

Talking about the issue of steadily shrinking picture space within large national magazines, Kathy Ryan observes: "Magazines have changed; they're designed in a new way, with shorter and quicker 'hits.' That's a lot of it. Everything opens on a spread [two facing pages], at most four pages. Documentary photography, by definition, is about a narrative, where you want to have eight pages flow from start to finish. So I think most photographers have to pack a lot more into single images, because the reality is, in an American publication at least (and this is even true in LIFE), there will be at most maybe four or five images. It is hard to have an image just be a transitional one, and that's a loss for all of us. Everyone has to be able to do the big picture where there is a lot going on."37

In the traditional picture story, transitional photographs play an important role. They sometimes show an overview of a scene, placing the subject in a larger context. They may move in and elaborate on details, such as how a subject spends her day or prepares for a performance. Without them, as Ryan points out, each picture in the group has to make up for the loss.

Space restrictions do hamper Mark's work, even though she is not interested in producing the traditional story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Her pictures set the tone as well as tell the story. Although she does not think it important to show how to do something or how a subject completes a given task, she does need to reveal the significance of an action or a way of life. Fewer reproductions in a magazine mean that the complexities of life which she finds so compelling have to be edited down to a handful of pictures. She chafes at making the complicated simplistic, stating that many "magazines want simple solutions--flashy pictures that are easy to look at and don't pose any questions."38
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