Mary Ellen Mark

From Artnet

Mary Ellen Mark was an American photographer best known for her documentary images of 1960’s counterculture. Her work highlighted Vietnam War protesters and societal outcasts in order to underscore their importance to contemporary society. “I’d rather pull up things from another culture that are universal that we can all relate to,” she has said of her approach to photography. Mark is most commonly associated with her 1983 spread Streetwise, published in Life Magazine, and the 2015 series “Tiny: Streetwise Revisited,” which both documented the lives of homeless youths over the course of 30 years. Born on March 20, 1940 in Philadelphia, PA, she earned a BA in painting and art history and an MA in photojournalism from the University of Pennsylvania. Upon receiving her degrees, the artist moved to New York, where she created photo-essays for major publications, including Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair. Mark died on May 25, 2015 in New York, NY. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art among others.