Women's Work

3rd December 2009

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Mary Ellen Mark - Streetwise

“There’s this abandoned hotel…And we’d carry water up in these gallon jugs, ‘cause it didn’t have no water or electricity. It was pretty easy, actually.” - Rat, 1983

Streetwise, a collection of photographs shot between the spring and Halloween of 1983 which documented the complex runaway community in Seattle. Unlike many photographers who choose to hide behind their rigs, Mark incorporated herself fully in her subjects’ world, befriending over forty runaway children and chronicling in their day-to-day activities on black and white film. Mark chose to focus primarily on the stories of Erin “Tiny” Blackwell, a fourteen year old prostitute, and of Rat, a boy from California who lives in an abandoned hotel with his crew.

“She has grown up quite a bit since she’s been on these streets. She’s fourteen going on twenty-one.” - Tiny’s Mother, 1983

“‘Sir, you wouldn’t be able to help me out with a little change, would you?’ ‘No.’ ‘Not at all, huh? Ya know, you’re a fuckin’ dick.’” - Rat, 1983

With a “supporting cast” of dumpster-raiding partners, incompetent parents, and teenage pimps, these two young street kids showed Mark and Bell the ropes of living life on the edge. Mark’s photographs document her immersion into their world; when coupled with quotes from the subjects, they become both aesthetically pleasing and harshly honest. Each photograph turns these otherwise nameless, faceless urchins into icons; Mark’s experience gives readers a glimpse into the intimate friendships that she built over the course of the project while at the same time making a more universal statement on the resilience of all children. By attaching personal statements to the already stark photographs, Mark forces the viewer to give an identity to the anonymous street children and become emotionally involved in all of their small triumphs and losses. The Streetwise project epitomizes Mark’s ability to evoke feelings of connectedness between her viewer and the subject; one cannot help but to become intrigued by the frank human emotion and liveliness of these children that Mark has captured on film.

Mark also explored the children’s lives through film, creating a feature length movie of the same name which she wrote and directed with her husband, Martin Bell.

Mary Ellen Mark, Selection from Streetwise, 1984

Mary Ellen Mark received her Master of Arts in Photojournalism from the University of Pennsylvania in 1964 and since then her work has appeared in LIFE, Rolling Stone, NY Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair, among others. Like Streetwise, much of her work focuses primarily on finding humanity in some of the more bizarre, discomfiting subcultures found throughout the world; selections from her portfolio include circus performers, prostitutes, and drug addicts. She has photographed people in Turkey, India, Mexico, Iceland, Vietnam, and Miami Beach; yet her collection is unified by this theme of capturing true human experience. Her work is characterized by subjects displaying very real, candid emotion; while some stare directly into the camera in a very confrontational manner, others are caught in moments of pensiveness or even simple boredom. Her subjects are comfortable enough with her presence to let down their guard and express themselves freely in front of the camera. Mark’s work demonstrates a powerful ability to capture stark, real images of people whose lives, so separate from our own, still display the same thoughts and emotions to which viewers from all walks of life can relate.

- - Hannah Sonnier