Mary Ellen Mark is an artist born on the 20th March 1940 in Pennsylvania, she died at 75 in New York, United States.

Mary Ellen Mark became well known for capturing more taboo subjects accurately, some of her most well known projects are on mental health patients at an Oregon State Hospital, prostitutes, and homeless people. Mark has always been known for her documentary photography, usually producing black and white images, and began putting her work out there within magazines. Mary Ellen Mark stands out to me because she would have to create trusting relationships with her subjects in order to achieve the images she wanted due to the sensitive nature of the topics, she said on multiple occasions within interviews that because these relationships were strong, she often would stay in contact with her subjects even years post project – Melissa Harris who edited Mary Ellen Marks books said ‘ She got to know the subjects she photographed very well, and she was able to convey who they were and how they lived, as well as a sense of their interior lives. There are not that many photographers who can do that.’

In 1978 Mark produced ‘Ward 81’, this was a collection of photographs that Mary Ellen Mark took at a state psychiatric hospital in Oregon. She lived at the hospital for two months in an effort to build relationships with patients to create a series of accurate representations of mental illnesses within mental health hospitals.

Mary Ellen Mark took interest in portraying and representing issues usually ignored by the standard frontline media, such as; mental illness, homelessness, and drug dealing. When asked about why she enjoys taking on projects like this, Mark responded ‘I would die if I had to be confined, I don’t want to feel that I’m missing out on experiencing as much as I can. For me, experiencing is knowing people all over the world and being able to photograph.’