Photographer Mary Ellen Mark dies at 75

Cafe Society
1

Nice write up of MEM at the NYT Lens Blog:
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/mary-ellen-mark-photographer-and-force-of-nature/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Multimedia&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body

“I don’t like gimmicky pictures; I’ve always hated them. I like pictures that are very clear and clean, whether you’re a great street photographer — somebody like Friedlander or Winogrand or Cartier-Bresson — or whether you’re a portraitist, like Irving Penn. Those pictures are very clean and simple. I like things that are real. So I think that some of the best ideas are things that aren’t so complicated."

2

I remember reading her book back in the day, but I’d completely forgotten about her until I saw the obits. She really did have a knack for capturing the humanity of marginal people, rather than presenting them as freaks for bored people to gawp at. She had an excellent eye, and, apparently, the ability to create a good rapport with her subjects.