Her best-known photo essay--"Streets of the Lost: Runaway Kids Eke Out a Mean Life in Seattle"--appeared in LIFE in July 1983. LIFE wanted a story dealing with the fact that more than a million children between the ages of eleven and seventeen run away from home each year. Seattle was chosen because it had been called one of the country's most livable cities. Mark's work on the LIFE article led to her return to Seattle in order to do an extended series of photographs and a documentary film, which her husband, Martin Bell, directed. In her introduction to the book STREETWISE, which was published in 1988, she wrote, "If street kids exist in a city like Seattle, then they can be found everywhere in America, and we are therefore facing a major social problem of runaways in this country."39 The LIFE story centers on a group of kids who hung out around a graffitied wall on Pike Street between First and Second. They had run away from home, had been kicked out, or had indifferent families. They lived their rough life the best way they could. Some were involved in selling drugs; more often, they sold themselves. They were very definitely streetwise.

The eighteen-picture spread shows teenagers panhandling, shooting up, fighting, rummaging for food in a garbage dumpster, and selling their own blood in order to survive. The two opening pictures define the territory. In a small photograph, an obviously young Laurie (age fourteen) leans against a wall, smokes a cigarette, and waits for customers. A large picture shows two friends, "Rat" and Mike. Rat, who at sixteen years of age looks more like eleven, stands slightly behind Mike, who reveals a Colt 45. The childlike faces, in conjunction with the accoutrements of an adult world, make for startling images.

Another photograph, not used in the LIFE article but later reproduced in the book, shows Lillie holding a hand-crocheted doll. The graffitied wall to her right reads, variously: "Mike," "Rat," and "Dope." The wall recedes into the background at a right angle to the sidewalk; a lone figure, possibly male, is silhouetted in the distance. Lillie's fingers grasp the stub of a cigarette in her mouth, making her look like a miniature Bogart looking for a fight. The tunnel effect created by the wall and sidewalk renders her small and separate from the world around her. The photograph is emblematic of the whole story: a child alone on the streets, too young to discard the reassuring doll, but knowing enough to take on the guise of toughness for survival. As one drug dealer put it: "Down here if you can't hold on to what you've got, then you don't deserve to have it."40

Mark was moved by what she found on Pike Street. The group had a loose cohesion and, individually, combined endurance with utter vulnerability. She returned to New York in May 1983, believing that their story would make a viable documentary film. In July the story was published in LIFE, and Mark, her husband, Martin Bell, and writer Cheryl McCall had raised enough funds by August to travel to Seattle and make the film.

Erin Blackwell, or "Tiny," was fourteen when the story was photographed for LIFE. She figures in the text of the article and in one photograph with her alcoholic mother. In the subsequent film STREETWISE, she emerged as the dominant subject. As Mark said: "Even the other kids think she's a star. She has that rare quality of being able to be totally honest and open about expressing her emotions on camera."41

During the shooting of the film Mark served as the liaison between the kids and filmmaker Bell, who was just getting to know them. She would think through ideas for the next day, considering whether Bell would be welcome and watching for conflict brewing among the kids.

Mark and Bell approach the photographing of subjects in a similar way: they work with short lenses and move in close. They have found that using longer (telephoto) lenses at the beginning of a project makes subjects feel that something is being surreptitiously recorded or stolen from them.

An incident involving Bell also insured their access. Mark explains: "We were filming in the Dismas Center, which is a facility open to kids for food, counseling, and recreation. Suddenly Chrissie, a sixteen-year-old street kid, became very angry with Martin for filming her. Martin, to everyone's amazement, opened his camera magazine and gave her the exposed strip of film."42 Chrissie left and threw out the film. Later, she WANTED to be filmed.

Mark continues: "When Martin gave the exposed film to Chrissie he showed her and the other kids that we were not trying to steal something from them--if they wanted to be part of the film that was fine, but if they didn't want to that was OK too. We knew that it was hard for these kids to trust anyone, but we hoped that they would learn to trust us a bit."43

STREETWISE was released in 1984. It was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award.

Mark endeavors not to be emotional at parting and not to force her own judgments on her subjects, although in projects such as STREETWISE a bond does develop over time. When she and Bell were leaving Seattle, Tiny asked if she could go with them. Mark seriously considered this and told Tiny what their conditions would be--she would have to attend school and stay home at night--and these restrictions led Tiny to change her mind.

Mark believes that if photographers become upset when leaving, the display causes undue pain to the subject. It may say to them that the photographer believes their situation is sad or hopeless. Mark knows she cannot change anyone's life, and to try to do so would be unfair and might actually harm the subject.

Photographers who think that they can take over someone else's life have the wrong attitude, Mark points out: "You have to let them live their lives, that's their right. You can't be a disciplinarian and force people into a life-style they don't want. As terrible as you might feel their lives are--and maybe they are that terrible--it's THEIR lives. You have to respect it for what it is, I think. If the readers send them money because of the article, great. You can tell them that it may be stupid to go out and spend their money on drugs, or whatever, but it's THEIR money."44

During the filming of STREETWISE, for example, Tiny remained on the streets, refusing legitimate job offers--even a film offer. Still having a hard time, she lives, with her three children, on welfare.

Mark recognizes that Tiny's life is a tough one and feels a great responsibility for her. Mark has kept in contact with the young woman, visiting her in Seattle over the years. The photographer also receives collect calls when Tiny is in jail or in other trouble. About making provision, such as bail, for Tiny, Mark says: "I would never leave her in a position where she's down and out...She's a very special kid. She's extremely candid, and she gave us a lot. She really opened up her life to us."45

The primary concern of Mark's work has always been people such as Tiny, to whom she refers as the "unfamous." Noncelebrities, unpretentious people who are generally out of the mainstream, the unfamous represent the successes and trials in everyone's life. Their lives may be wildly different--from the nuns in the House for the Dying to the runaways--but they are often individuals who have endured against the odds. Kathy Ryan describes Mark as having "a great passion for the little people, the people who are not famous. I was very surprised when she told me once that she didn't want to [cover an event for me] because she thought that some famous politicians would be [there]. She said that she didn't like to cover those people; they made her feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, if I've got a story that involves someone, an unknown person, someone who has a much greater story...like the kid on death row...she is the person. She understands them as people, so much more than many other photographers. You know she's going to bring back the heart of the story, not only the facts of it."46

Since Mark seeks to define feeling in her photographs, she avoids people who have a calculated public face. Looking for universals, she rejects manufactured posturing: "To touch on people's lives [in a way they] haven't been touched on before, it's fascinating. You know, it's one thing if [a celebrity] has an incredible character and you're really going to be able to delve into their personality--that's great. But you can never get real purity if people have been spoiled by the camera and don't trust you. I like feeling that I'm able to be a voice for those people who aren't famous, the people that don't have the great opportunities."47

Being a vehicle for the communication of someone else's story entails a responsibility to the subject, to the reading public, and to oneself. Mark sums up these three as "honesty." And being honest means acknowledging that she has a personal point of view, that she cannot be invisible or uninvolved in the unfolding of events. She must be true to herself: "I think you have to have a real point of view that's your own. You have to tell it your way. And, I think it's a mistake to shoot for a specific magazine's point of view because it's never going to be as good. You have to shoot for yourself and photograph [the way] you believe it."48

She does not want to shoot other people's photographs--either ones an editor expects to see or ones that have been made before. This struggle to interpret a subject in her own way further explains why Mark prefers to work on longer projects. The more deeply she immerses herself in a situation, the more likely it is she will become sensitive to the special attitudes and circumstances that differentiate one story from another. Telling details become apparent, and she can use them as visual metaphors.

Mark is careful to distinguish between a point of view that develops as she works and a superimposed photographic style that can subsume the subject in mannered techniques. She is not interested in interjecting herself through such techniques: "I think you reveal yourself by what you choose to photograph, but I prefer photographs that tell more about the subject. There's nothing much interesting to tell about me; what's interesting is the person I'm photographing, and that's what I try to show...

"I think each photographer has a point of view and a way of looking at the world...that has to do with your subject matter and how you choose to present it. What's interesting is letting people tell you about themselves in the picture."49

Mark's choice of the word "unfamous" goes beyond the people portrayed to apply to the stories as a whole. As she says: "I always wanted to photograph the universal subjects."50 In other words, she does not rush off to the scene of breaking news: a fire, a war zone, or a presidential visit. She looks for feeling, not event.

Because of the vulnerability of many of her subjects, Mark does worry about exploiting them. She tries to reconcile her need to tell the story with the intrusion into their lives: "It's a very hard thing to live with often...I'm interested in those kinds of stories, so I just look at myself and say, 'I'm taking a lot by taking these pictures. Are the photographs being seen by anyone? Am I giving anything back?' And I honestly don't know. It's hard."51

Though not front-page news, her subjects nonetheless often add a different perspective to issues of general concern, such as drug addiction, homelessness, and teenage pregnancy. The unexceptional nature of the people photographed allows them to be seen in a larger context. Said Mark in one interview: "What you look for is a symbol of something in everyone's life."52

Mark describes her work as "documentary," although she acknowledges that it may also be called "photojournalism." The sometimes interchangeable terms are a cause of general confusion in writing about photography because each is a broad category, and neither refers to a homogenous monolithic class. Mary Ellen Mark's photographs perfectly fulfill both definitions (that is to say, the dilemma seems to be a writer's, not a photographer's).

Her work appears in some of the best-known magazines and newspapers in the world, and, as such, it is photojournalism. Part of the confusion arises from the fact that photojournalism can be said to DOCUMENT current events, such as the demise of Communism in the Eastern bloc. Photographers who covered the fall of the Berlin Wall were creating a document for the future. As the cliche says, they were "catching history on the run."

Immediacy is basic to photojournalism. Time is an important element in all photography, but particularly so in the aging of photojournalism: "old news" is an oxymoron.

Photojournalism arises from the conjunction of a photographer's pictures and a writer's words. The best stories result when the individuals become a team heading along parallel tracks to the same destination. Then, the words and pictures do not work at cross purposes, but they each illustrate the other, providing the reader with a deeper understanding of the story.

News is also a product. Agencies hire photographers and purchase photographs. Most photographers work for newspapers, magazines, or news services, and they seldom photograph events of their own choosing. They demonstrate their professionalism through the ability to come away from diverse circumstances with an accurate account of the situation as they see it.

There are many types of photojournalism, from single newspaper images to the longer essay form made famous in this country by LIFE magazine. This variety may confuse those who try to pigeonhole a photographer. In the end it's better to be grateful for wonderful photographs than to worry about abstract definitions.

Examples of documentary photography range from flat, impersonal statements of fact, such as evidential or real-estate photographs, to highly subjective reactions to reality. Categorizing "documentary" as a style of photography shortchanges both the photographers and the work, for there are a myriad of styles--from the cool rationality of Walker Evans to the gritty sensuality of Larry Fink. Documentary photography is, rather, an approach to the medium.

In his book DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY, Arthur Rothstein wrote that other words have been suggested, among them, "realistic, factual, historical--but none convey the deep respect for the truth and the desire to create active interpretations of the world in which we live that is the documentary tradition."53 Understood in this way, photojournalism is part of the older legacy of documentary photography.

Though some think of it as objective, documentary photography, like all photography, is an interpretation or personal description of the world. As photographer Dorothea Lange said, it "is not a factual photograph per se. The documentary photograph carries with it another thing, a quality in the subject that the artist responds to. It is a photograph which carries the full meaning of the episode or the circumstance or the situation that can only be revealed--because you can't really recapture it--by this other quality. There is no real warfare between the artist and the documentary photographer. He has to be both."54 The meaning and artistry of a documentary photograph, therefore, is embedded in the choice of subject and in its particular rendering by a photographer.

Because Mark always photographs people, her approach is referred to as "social documentary." Her method of work, as previously described here, is not neutral but passionate. Unlike street photographers such as Lee Friedlander, whose work in the 1960s might also be called social documentary, she engages her subjects. They react to her presence and reveal something about themselves in the process.

Precedents for her work can be found in several places; no one exists in a vacuum. The work of three photographers--Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, and W. Eugene Smith--suggests itself: Bourke-White because of her photographs' strong graphic presence; Lange for her long-term commitment to certain subjects; and Smith for the strength of his photo essays, especially the late work, in which each image can stand on its own. All three tackled difficult subjects--war, poverty, homelessness, and disease--each photographer with a distinct approach.

Mark says that she loves Diane Arbus's work, but her approach to the medium is very different. Even so, Mark's photographs are sometimes erroneously compared to those of Arbus. There are certainly superficial similarities. Arbus also worked close to her subject, printed in black and white, and often chose atypical people to photograph. Mark, however, is not a cool observer of the aberrant. Her work is not about display but about engagement with larger social issues.

Mark's friend Greg Heisler sees her work as too personal to fit his definition of documentary. Instead, he has invented a new category, calling it "psychodocumentary or social interpretive" photography.55 Heisler characterizes most documentary photographers as saying: "'I am a witness, I'm not going to get involved, I don't wish to alter--I only observe.' In fact, it's not true, not true at all. They move their camera here instead of there, they've made that decision, there's a hierarchy. Documentary photographers don't take responsibility for their vision. Mary Ellen does. Whenever I see her work, I don't say, 'Oh, so that is what it's like.' I think, 'that's Mary Ellen's take on that.'"56 Although he may not be right about the involvement of most documentary photographers, Heisler does recognize the emotional charge in Mark's work.

As photographer Aaron Siskind has pointed out, Mark "digs deep, [and as a result] she is as fine a photographer as you can be."57 What he particularly admires about her work, he says, is its objectivity--meaning that although she is a "woman full of feeling, she doesn't allow that to overflow into sentimentality. The pictures are very straight and honest."58

The power of her work confounds easy categorization. It transcends its particular content and, though not sentimental, radiates emotional intensity.

Mark approached her work on the Indian circus with a characteristically intense involvement. She had visited her first Indian circus during her initial stay in the country in 1968. The strangeness of two sights stayed with her: a hippopotamus in a tutu, and a chimpanzee pushing a baby carriage with a human baby in it. She resolved to put together a story on the circus, but, as with FALKLAND ROAD, a long time elapsed between the idea and its fruition. Over the next twenty years, Mark saw many kinds of circuses in India, but she never had the financial backing to stay and explore the subject. Her chance came in 1989 in the form of a grant from the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House and the Professional Photography Division at Eastman Kodak.

Mark made two three-month trips to India, traveling with sixteen different circuses. She hired both American and Indian assistants. The Indian researcher Dayanita Singh was particularly helpful because she not only translated but contacted all the circus owners and pieced together the complicated logistics.

The mechanics and sheer energy needed for three people in search of circuses to travel with heavy photographic equipment was staggering. Mark's personal equipment included four Nikon FM2 cameras and seven lenses; four Leica cameras--two M4-2s, one M4-P and one M-6--and five Leitz lenses; one Polaroid SX-70 camera; four Hasselblad cameras with six lenses; several strobes and flash units; and a half-dozen assorted light meters. She also used nearly a thousand rolls of Kodak Tri-X film. In part, the overabundance of equipment reflected her desire to be prepared in the event of breakdown in rural India.

Finding the circuses was sometimes a challenge, Mark explains: "Even if an owner agrees that you can photograph his circus, he doesn't want to tell you the location until the very last second because they are competitive about locations."59 For example, the owner of a particular Bengali circus was uncooperative, and Mark had difficulty getting information about the schedule. But she and her assistants didn't give up, and they finally "found out where they were going to be. We went all the way to Benares--there were riots in Benares, but we rushed down there. We rushed to the site, and we came to this empty pit. It had moved two days before. No one knew where it went."60

Mark photographed circuses from different regions of India: Maharashtra, Bengal, and Kerala. Each had its own style. Although the circus originated in Europe, Mark points out that the Indians have adapted it to their own culture, liberally mixing the traditions of East and West. One obvious change has been the addition of animals not generally seen in a Western circus, such as the hippo, some pelicans, and even a vulture.

The Indian circus project bears many hallmarks of her previous work, being solely about a group of people and their way of life. By extension, it includes their animals, which seem to comment on human personality and weakness. The unknown performers and trainers move through a larger world perfecting their acts, accepting their particular destiny with grace and determination, letting the photographer into their world.

A small thing within the immensity of India, a traveling circus is not an item of current news, nor does it attract the attention of the national or world media. Yet for Mark it holds insights that go far beyond its apparent significance: "I'm trying to look for certain universals--universals that stand for things we all feel. That's why an exotic picture doesn't interest me per se. I go to India to look again because it is a raw and open country. I love it. I think things are openly passionate there...I want to see them as they relate to my own culture and other cultures. l don't want to see them as some exotic magic ritual...I look for things that cross cultural boundaries."61

For Mark, the circus tells a story about hope. Each is a closed, self-sufficient society, persevering in a hard life to create a dream world. They are not what they seem: elephants don't wear glasses. And they are more than they seem: not performers hired to entertain, but a community carrying its world with it.

Mark's photographs reveal the texture of circus life. Closeup portraits of acrobats and animals take precedence over long shots of the camp. She did not shoot the typical overview from the top row of the grandstand. Instead, she went into the ring itself or into the cage with a bear, or she stood in the center of the cage as the lions roared and jumped through hoops.

The pictures show the circus as an extended family--part of that family animals. Animals and humans depend completely on one another. The humans feed the animals, and the animals work with the family to provide the food.

Mark says that she likes the animals "as humans,"62 meaning, in part, that she takes them exactly as they are presented: a bear standing around in a shiny dress, a chimpanzee with running shoes, a small dog carrying an umbrella. The animals seem to be interchangeable with dwarfs, children, and adults. A dwarf dressed as a gorilla holds a dog, a young girl carries an adult male dwarf, and a chimp in a dress puts a protective arm around her trainer. The ironic confusion of identity, age, and place in society appeals to Mark's sense of humor.

The performers train constantly to stay in shape. The acrobats work without nets and have to stay agile to avoid disaster. Says Mark: "It's a country full of perfectionists...[In] one act this guy balances on his head while swinging on a swing seventy feet in the air. I said to him, 'That's incredible! What happens if you fall?' and he replied, 'Death comes.'"63

Mark wasn't interested in depicting how a circus moved, set up, and ran. She wanted to understand the people. And so the individual photographs stand alone, each telling its own story. Joyful, bizarre, and wonderful, together they show a range of types and feelings.

Twenty-one years after she saw that first costumed hippo, Mark found the resources to return for the long stay. This may be called obsession, but obsession is another word for perseverance, drive, belief in and commitment to one's own vision, intense focus, knowing one's own mind, and never turning aside from the recognized need for expression.

Mark tells students in her workshops to make whatever sacrifice they must to do their own work. She follows her own advice. A pragmatic woman, she encourages not foolishness but decision and control. She also tells students not to be defeated by a situation but to push on, that in order to be successful a photographer has to turn around a negative situation. Some stories will get done, some will not, and others will take years of incubation. As a photographer, she has learned to know the difference.

All her pictures contain the element of time: time spent watching, listening, talking. Mark says that the longer she stays, the closer she gets to her subject. And the closer she gets, the more likely she is to find HER pictures--pictures that strike the core of an issue.

Mary Ellen Mark has won many awards, her work has been published around the world, and her books make her an influential presence in America. Yet for her, each job is the first job--to be cherished, fretted over, and plunged into. Piles of newspaper clippings await with stories yet to be researched and fought for. People remain endlessly fascinating. All she needs is an interested editor and lots of time.

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