recipe for Mary Ellen Marks type of photography

After observing many of Mary Ellen Marks photographs, i have come up with a recipe of techniques to recreate Mary Ellen Marks type of photography.


Mary ellen mark techniques.

-black n white
- shadows
- use of sunlight
- captures unique images
- captures many different cultures
- like to incorporate children into her photographs
- in portraights, subjects look into the camara.

Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen mark was born on March 20th, 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She grew up in the suburbs and started taking pictures by the young age of 9, with her Box Brownie camera. Mary always enjoyed photography but developed a real passion for it in high school. In her free time she loved to take pictures and draw lots of different things. She attended the University of Pennsylvania in 1962, an Ivy League school and got her BFA (Bachelor of fine arts) in painting and history. Then in 1964 she attended the Annenberg School for communication and got her masters degree in photojournalism. Right after college Mary received a Fulbright scholarship to photograph in Turkey for a year. Also that year she traveled to many various European countries such as Spain, England, Italy, and Greece. During her travels she gained lots of experience in photographing foreign countries and developed a love for taking pictures while traveling. This became one of her trademarks and she had published many photo shoots in various countries such as India, Ethiopia, Vietnam, the USA, and Australia. Traveling constantly helped Mary Ellen mark develops her own uniqueness to photojournalism. What made here technique so unique was she took photos of situations all over the world that were very strange and odd. She captured the unordinary and presented it in a simple black and white form. an example is the photo below.

I think why this style of photojournalism captured so many peoples attention is because it mixed the unordinary with the ordinary. She would take the ordinary subject such as a little girl and photograph her doing a very unordinary act, such as smoking. I also think that since most of her photos are in black and white, it leaves room for the viewer to fantasize what colors might be there. Some of marks most famous work comes from photographing circuses. She loved capturing the unique and specialness of the circus and had photo shoots with circuses in Vietnam and India. Probably her most famous shot came out of the India circus photo shoot.

This photo exemplifies marks style really well and was one of her most published and seen photos.photojournalism is a type of journalism that portrays information threw either one single portrait, a series of photos or even sometimes video. the genre of photojournalism was pioneered by photographers such as Carol Szathmari, William Simpson, and Mathew Brady. These peoples photographs were concedered photojournalism because they were the first pictures illustrating a story in a newspaper. Photojournalisms birth had a lot to do with the invention of the printing press. the printing press allowed photos that captured a story to be shown to a mass amount of people all across a country or nation. Both the printing press and photojournalism sprung up around the mid 18th century. below are some photos taken by the pioneers of photojournalism

Photojournalisms "golden age" was said to have occurred from the 1930s to the 1950s. Many pictures that illustrated stories were published in magazines and papers such as (Picture Post (London), Paris Match (Paris), Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (Berlin), Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung (Berlin), Life (USA), Look (USA), Sports Illustrated (USA)) and newspapers (The Daily Mirror (London), The New York Daily News. all these magazines and papers were varied in context. Papers such as the new york daily news focused on issues and topics that were occurring in new york, while as sports illustrated focused on the world of sports. Many magazines, such as "Life" focused on politics. Photojournalism was very revotiotionary the politics because it let the public see how many politicians and people of power looked.

Photojournalism also helped significantly with the documentation of unknown countires and places. since pictures could be printed so easily, many people got to experience what foreign places and countries looked like. This changed many peoples views on the world and opened up peoples eyes to all the kinds of different people and cultures that were in the world. If you think about it, with out photojournalism, the publics perspective on globalization and education on other cultures and races would be very altered. It was truly a revolutionary type of photography that educated the world.