Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark was an American 20th century photographer. Her work, which focused primarily on portraiture, has been featured in Life Magazine, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The New York Times and Vanity Fair. Her career began in Turkey through a Fulbright Scholarship, then to all over Europe, and then to New York City where she lived most of her life. She joined Magnum Photos in 1977.

Mark paved the way for other photographers to capture social issues in their work, as she primarily focused on issues such as homelessness and drug addiction, or as she called them, the unfamous. She also hosted photography workshops for the younger generation to allow them to have an opportunity in photography.

Mary Ellen Mark's photo depicts a girl jumping over a wall in Central Park, using a moderately quick shutter speed while panning to blur the background as the girl descends. This motion in Mark's photo creates a feeling of excitement, and it takes the viewer back to the end of the 1960s which saw the end of the Civil Rights Movement.