Aperture Review
The article that definitely caught my eye was title "Excerpt from Mary Ellen Mark on the Portrait and the Moment." Her photos were all very powerful to me and the excerpt left me so hungry for more of her work, I actually spent several hours googling and reading articles on Mark and her projects. For one, she tells her subjects not to smile in order to make it seem more real. Also, she really gets to know her subjects on a personal level and sticks with that one subject for quite sometime. She believes that in her photos that "less is more" and preaches the idea to her students that one should never be without their equipment because you never know when you'll find the perfect shot right in front of you. The photo that really caught my attention was the photo of a nine year old girl, Amanda from Valdese, North Carolina, standing in the pool with her cousin and smoking a cigarette. Her photo's really capture the strangeness of reality and tangible subjects without making the photo too surreal, much like the photo of the two young boys who were "macho beyond their years."
Amanda and Her Cousin Amy, Valdese, North Carolina, 1990 © Mary Ellen Mark
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