Mary Ellen Mark is one of the great photographers of the second half of the 20th century. After her death in 2015 and a long career that led her to publish in prestigious international media such as Life, New York Times, Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone, this exhibition arrives in Barcelona which, although not the great retrospective she would deserve, at least, is a good sample of what her career was. "It is important that she remains on the scene because too often the work of female photographers, when they disappear, tends to drift," comments Anne Morin, the curator and architect of this wonderful exhibition, who has also been the director of the recent first International Photography Festival of Castilla y León.
Mary Ellen Mark began her photographic career in the streets of New York, covering demonstrations during the 60s, and it was there that she discovered that what really interested her was photographing those who live on the margins of society: "I feel an affinity for socially disadvantaged people. What interests me most is to make their existence known," she said without shame.
The main protagonists of her works are women, and children also occupy an important place, whom she treated and portrayed as "little people," according to her own words, since she considered it important not to make a distinction with adults. For long periods of time, Mary Ellen Mark would live with these women, empathize, accompany, share, gain their trust until she captured the absolute truth behind the eyes that look directly at the camera, and of which we are witnesses when we stand in front of one of her photographs.
There is no search for aesthetics, what there is is the purest honesty. And sometimes, it even makes us uncomfortable because of how intimate it is. "I 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're appropriating a part of their soul." And that's what she did with her subjects: establish bonds.
With many of those she photographed, she maintained a relationship for years, but with some, she committed for life. "She didn't just take a photo and leave, disengaging from their problems. She always came back. She followed up with them over the years. She committed to the people she portrayed. She didn't look down on them, but rather eye to eye. Her photographic writing is frontal and direct," says Morin.
This is the case of the Damm family, a small clan living in Los Angeles in their car, whom she followed for several years until child abuse allegations distanced her, or that of Erin Blackwell, better known as Tiny, whom she portrayed for over three decades since she met her on the streets of Seattle during the 80s, and to whom two documentaries filmed by Mark's husband, filmmaker Martin Bell, were dedicated. A friendship forged by time in which we are participants through the changes in Erin's body. From a runaway teenager to a mother of ten children, all by different fathers.
A passionate witness, her life's work consisted of using photography and film to delve into the existence of others as a way to accept their humanity and share it with a wider audience, providing her subjects with a relevant, often powerful voice.
Her photos are overwhelming because we see beyond them. They have what Roland Barthes called the punctum, a detail with expansive, unnamable force. It is a blind field, a supplement: it is what it adds to the photograph and yet is in it. It is a vanishing point to infinity. What does the mother of the Damms feel as her gaze flees from the car? And the girls in the psychiatric ward? In the posthumous book that her husband Martin Bell edited with her best photos, The Book of Everything, at the end he tells us about her that she was "fearless, firmly true to herself and her work, even when she was overwhelmed by doubts. She was a defiant warrior."
Barcelona is the first city to show this exhibition to the public, which will also travel to Lenzburg (Switzerland) and Paris. This selection, which also takes us to the Twinsburg (Ohio) twins fair, to Mother Teresa of Calcutta's charities, to teenage proms, or to the members of a circus in India, is an initiatory journey into what photography meant to Mark. Let's hope that Lives of Women is just the tip of the iceberg of a future major retrospective exhibition that can be called The Work (and Life) of Mary Ellen Mark in its own right.