Mary Ellen Mark (1940–2015) byla skvělá americká dokumentární fotografka. Její poetické fotografie zachycující děti s rodiči i staré ženy v barech, ale i feťýky, prostitutky a obyvatelky psychiatrické léčebny,  jsou právě nyní k vidění v berlínském prostoru C/O.

Vashira and Tashira Hargrove, Suffolk, New York, 1993. © Mary Ellen Mark, Courtesy of The Mary Ellen Mark Foundation and Howard Greenberg Gallery

Výběr převážně černobílých záběrů ze 70. let minulého století přináší jakousi zvláštní a trvale napjatou melancholii. Jejich všednost má kouzlo a zároveň probouzí jakousi zasutou lítost. Není tu žádná bujarost, úsměvy se šetří. Některé snímky jsou celkem šokující, pokud vám vadí záběry užívání drog nebo nemocí a smrtí, je k úvaze, zda výstavu absolvovat celou.Přesto to není o lidském neštěstí, ale víc o lidskosti. Doporučuju.

13 Mary Ellen Mark, Paris, 1970 © Jean-Claude Carrière

Mary Ellen Mark – Encounters

C/O Berlin

Otevřeno denně 11-20

Výstava trvá do 18. ledna 2024.
C/O Berlin, Amerika Haus, Hardenbergstraße 22–24, Berlín, Německo.

The Damm family in their car, Los Angeles, California, 1987. © Mary Ellen Mark, Courtesy of The Mary Ellen Mark Foundation and Howard Greenberg Gallery

Tisková zpráva (EN)

MARY ELLEN MARK
Encounters
C/O Berlin presents the exhibition Mary Ellen Mark . Encounters from Sep
16, 2023 to Jan 18, 2024. The opening is at 20:00 on Fri, Sep 15, 2023 at
C/O Berlin, Amerika Haus, Hardenbergstraße 22–24, 10623 Berlin.
An older woman is wearing a massive pair of round glasses and her white curls
are perfectly styled. She clings to her glass on the bar counter as she kisses her
companion on the lips with gusto. She’s already stubbed out her cigarette, but
perhaps the couple is thinking “the night is still young.” A black and white photo-
graph full of joie de vivre. A moment of encounter—and one of the many sponta-
neous photographs taken by Mary Ellen Mark (1940–2015).
Since the 1960s, the US documentarian and portraitist has also advocated for
people on the fringes of society. Both her personal work and photographs made
on assignment were taken with immense empathy. As a documentary photogra-
pher led by humanist ideals, Mark never avoided those in need or excluded from
society—whether homeless children in Seattle, the mentally ill in Oregon, or sex
workers in Mumbai. Instead, she developed her own visual language to respect-
fully depict these individuals and to document their unique circumstances. Her
work is regarded as a successor to great socio-critical photographers of the past
such as W. Eugene Smith, Dorothea Lange, and Walker Evans.
Mark herself came of age during the heyday of the women‘s rights movement in
the US. Unsurprisingly, she often turns her gaze toward women and girls. For her
work, she would often live for weeks alongside her subjects, creating visual cha-
racter studies and narratives, while never losing sight of those key singular ima-
ges. After publishing her photographs, she often remained in contact with the in-
dividuals she portrayed, in some cases, photographing them over a period of
years. Her connection to her subjects was often deep and personal.
The exhibition Mary Ellen Mark . Encounters features five iconic projects created
by the photographer in the 1970s and 1980s, later publishing them in a series of
photobooks that played a crucial role in cementing her reputation. Ward 81 coll-
ects her documentation of women in a state mental institution in Oregon over a
period of weeks, Falkland Road is a reportage on sex workers in Mumbai, Mother
Teresa’s Missions of Charity is an eponymous exploration both of the woman and
her mission, Indian Circus reproduces a series depicting traveling circus families,
while Mark‘s award-winning Streetwise project and subsequent Tiny: Streetwise
Revisited show her ongoing commitment to telling the story of Erin Charles, who
was thirteen when they first met, and known as Tiny. Mark began the project
when Tiny was living on the streets and continued photographing her (and even-
tually her ten children) over the next thirty years.

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