Washington, D.C. and Art Institute of Chicago, Chi-
cago, Illinois (and traveled to Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California)
1990 The Indomitable Spirit; International Center of Photo-
graphy; New York, New York, and traveling
The Art of Photography: 1839–1989; Seibu Museum of
Art; Tokyo, Japan
1993 Abject Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; New
York, New York
1994 Fictions of the Self: The Portrait in Contemporary
Photography; Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of
North Carolina at Greensboro, North Carolina
Selected Works
Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter, 1979
Man in Polyester Suit, 1980
Self-portrait, 1980
Orchid, 1982
Eggplant, 1985
Thomas, 1987
Calla Lily, 1988
Nipple, 1988
Further Reading
Celant, Germano.Mapplethorpe. Milan: Electa, 1992.
Celant, Germano, and Arkady Ippolitov, with Karole Vail.
Robert Mapplethorpe and the Classical Tradition: Photo-
graphs and Mannerists Prints. New York: Guggenheim
Museum, 2004.
Danto, Arthur C.Playing with the Edge: The Photographic
Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe.Berkeley,Los
Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996.
Kardon, Janet, David Joselit, Kay Larson, and Patti Smith.
Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment. Philadel-
phia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of
Pennsylvania, 1988.
Levas, Dimitri, ed.Pictures: Robert Mapplethorpe. New
York: Arena Editions, 1999.
Mapplethorpe, Robert.Certain People: A Book of Portraits
Text by Susan Sontag. Pasadena: Twelvetree Press, 1985.
Marshall, Richard, Richard Howard, and Ingrid Sischy.
Robert Mapplethorpe. New York: Whitney Museum of
American Art, 1988.
Morgan, Stuart. ‘‘Something Magic.’’Artforum25 (May
1987): 118–123.
Sontag, Susan. ‘‘Sontag on Mapplethorpe.’’Vanity Fair 48
(July 1985): 68–72.MARY ELLEN MARK
American
For three decades, Mary Ellen Mark has photo-
graphed members of subcultures around the world,
including heroin addicts in England, runaway ado-
lescents on the streets of Seattle, women confined to a
locked psychiatric ward of Oregon State Hospital,
circus performers in India, prostitutes in Bombay,
and children with cancer at a camp in California.
Her constant subject is people within a social context,
and she generally aims for an empathetic but unsen-
timental expression of humanistic values. One of the
most widely respected documentary photographers
working today, Mark moves seamlessly between
journalistic and fine arts contexts: she has completed
many editorial assignments for magazines, photo-
graphed advertising campaigns, and published
books of her personal projects; her work has been
shown in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions
worldwide; and her photographs are included in sig-
nificant museum and private collections.
Born in Philadelphia in 1940 to a middle-class
family, Mark received her undergraduate training
in the fine arts, receiving a BFA in art history and
painting from the University of Pennsylvania in- She embraced photography while continuing
at the University of Pennsylvania as a graduate
student in the Annenberg School for Communica-
tion, receiving an MA in photojournalism in 1964.
After graduation, she went to Turkey to photograph
on a Fulbright Scholarship, then traveled through-
out Europe. In 1966, she moved to New York City,
where she still lives, and began to work as a free-
lance photojournalist. In 1968, she traveled for the
first time to India, a country that has inspired some
of her most significant work. In her career, she has
photographed throughout the United States, and in
many other parts of the world, among them Eng-
land, Spain, India, Vietnam, and Mexico. Mark’s
work has appeared in magazines such asLife, Time,
Paris-Match, Ms., New York Times Magazine, Va-
nity Fair, Vogue,andThe New Yorker,aswellas
virtually all the leading photography magazines
and journals. She has published 14 books of her
photographs; and her images have been published
in many anthologies and exhibition catalogues.
MARK, MARY ELLEN