Mary Ellen Mark:Alike, my Friends
25.01 – 12.02.2022
Closed
Hours
Monday to Saturday
10:00 am – 5:30 pm
Gallery
3–5 Swallow St
London
W1B 4DE
Huxley-Parlour are delighted to present a solo exhibition of 26 works by American photographer Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015).
Mark is widely known for her ability to photograph those on the margins of society with compassion and intimacy. Taking portraiture as its focus, Huxley-Parlour’s exhibition will examine the relationship between the photographer and her subjects. More broadly, the exhibition seeks to display Mark’s significant contribution to the history of American documentary photography.
THE EXHIBITION
8
B. UNITED STATES1940-2015
Biography
Mary Ellen Mark is widely known for her ability to photograph those on the margins of society with compassion and intimacy. Born in Pennsylvania in 1940, Mark originally studied art and art history at the University of Pennsylvania, before returning to do a masters degree in Photojournalism in 1964. Mark went on to photograph internationally, including in countries such as Turkey, England, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain, before settling in New York in 1966 where her practice became focused on the varied social and political life of the city’s inhabitants. Often spending years on projects, Mark’s practice was centred around developing relationships with and gaining the trust of her subjects, resulting in unique portraits which reflected her humanist approach to documentary photography.
Mark has had several major museum shows at institutions such as: The Museum of Contemporary Photography; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and most recently, a posthumous retrospective at The National Museum of Women in The Arts. Mark published eighteen photo books in her lifetime, including Passport (1974) and Streetwise (1983). She has been decorated widely, earning a Guggenheim Fellowship (1994), a Hasselblad (1997), and an Outstanding Contribution to Photography award from the World Photography Organisation (2014). Mary Ellen Mark died in 2015.