American Odyssey

I had the opportunity to look at a copy of Mary Ellen Mark’s American Odyssey, one of more than a dozen of her books. She has shot on assignment all over the word, but this book is a compilation of work she has done in various corners of the United States over the last couple of days and is definitely worth another look.

I’ve admired the work of Mary Ellen Mark for at least a couple of decades now. She is one of the best documentary photographers of our generation, one on par with Eugene Smith, another photojournalist I admire. I first saw her work as a student at the University of Texas and am continually impressed with the quality of work she continues to produce.

A few random thoughts as I flipped through the book, which is published by Aperture. Her images are simple, yet powerful. For most of them, she does not drag around a full studio with her. She generally carries a camera and occasionally a flash.

She has the ability to build relationships in a relatively short period of time with a wide variety of people and she keeps those relationships going even after she is done shooting. Her photographs have been described in several ways: intimate, powerful, moving,  disturbing images which chronicle broken people in the middle of a near hopeless or violent situation (or both). In many cases, the innocence of children shines through. In others, we’re not so sure. Those are the images that are the most bleak.

Many of her images are of the country’s most vulnerable population, a subset of American life we dont generally see from the comfortable existence of middle class American life. Her subjects run the gamut of American life: ballroom dancers in Florida, an elderly couple in New York, abused women in a New York shelter, homeless children in Seattle, a drug-addicted couple living in southern California, small town rodeos in multiple western cities, transvestites in New York, and a Ku Klux Klan rally in Tennessee.

Building relationships is key to the strength of her images. “I try to spend as much time as possible on  project to build a rapport with m subjects. Intimacy is very important in my photographs,” she wrote in the afterword of the book.

She shows great sympathy for her subjects, even people who don’t get sympathy in most other places. Her drive for a powerful image forces her to persevere even when she is not comfortable, as in an assignment photographing KKK rally or Indian prostitutes.

“I’ve always tried to let my photographs be  voice for people who have less of an opportunity to speak for themselves,” she said.