Photographer Mary Ellen Mark has made a career of choosing unlikely subjects for her portraits—ordinary individuals or people socially outside the mainstream—in order to capture essential human qualities she believes we all share. She once commented, "What I'm trying to do is make photographs that are universally understood, whether in China or Russia or here . . . . I want my photographs to be about the basic emotions and feelings that we all experience."
Visit www.maryellenmark.com and find the portrait that strikes you as most interesting. What is your first reaction to the subject(s) depicted there? What elements in the image do you notice first, and why? What details in the portrait mark these individuals as ordinary, unremarkable—or, in Mark's words "not known"? Can you identify things you share in common with the people in the photos, as Mark's comment suggests? Why or why not?
Click the "Gallery" icon on at Mary Ellen Mark's website and explore her collection of celebrity portraits. Do you think that she is able to depict famous people as essentially ordinary? Does she depict any of these celebrities as experiencing "the basic emotions and feelings that we all experience"? Write a 2 to 3-page essay that compares one of Mark's celebrity portraits to one of her portraits of lesser known performers. What similarities and differences can you find between the portrayals? How are these significant?
