About Mary Ellen Mark and her work

A brief biography to provide some context about their work:
Mary Ellen Mark died May 2015 aged 75. She was an american photographer who was very well known for her portraiture, advertising, and photojournalism photography. She mainly photographed people who were either heading or already in the troubled side of life away from the mainstream society part. She had 18 collections of her work put out for the public to see and they were big hits.

An outline of the type of photographs they produce:
Her biggest two hits from her 18 collections were called 'Ward 81' and 'Streetwise'. Streetwise is more of a documentary film that Mary and her husband Martin Bell put together to show the lives of homeless children/young adults in Seattle.
Ward 81 is a collection of photographs of women from Oregon State Hospital. She stayed at the hospital for a few hours and got to know a few of the women whom she would record and take photograph. The reason why she did this was to let the women show the world who they were and what their life was like mainly.

A clear idea of what the purpose of their work is/was
The purpose of her work was to show the public what the other side of life was like. The less glamours side. She managed to achieve this several times.


The image below is from Mary Ellen Marks work called streets of the lost, runaway kids.

Composition: All the features below that make this picture a whole.

Lighting: The lighting seems to be natural as it isn't harsh like artificial lighting can be.  

Focus: She's made the main focus the two troubled young teenagers and the gun that the oldest is holding. She seems to have asked him to hold it up and in front of him so that it catches the eye first as the lighting hits it and makes it brighter.

Framing: The two teenagers are in the centre of the frame with a little of the run down town behind them to add to the unhappy atmosphere of the photograph.

Narrative and visual language: The narrative of this photograph is to show the public parts of america that are over looked and forgotten about and who have to live in these parts and how they survive.