In India six-year-old girls are sold by their fathers to traveling circuses for four-year stints for a sum that will feed their families for a year. One of these girls, trained to perform as a “plastic lady,” appears on the cover of the catalog for photographer Mary Ellen Mark’s mid-career exhibition, which is on international tour and is currently at the Chicago Cultural Center. The unnamed girl stares out intently, with her little puppy “Sweety” nestled between her cheek and her heel.
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Mark finds one charge about her work especially exasperating. “I’m always surprised when people say if you’re taking pictures of people who aren’t privileged, that it’s somehow exploitive. That I don’t understand. What are you supposed to do? Are you only supposed to take pictures of the privileged? Therefore that’s not exploitive? Where do people get off saying that you’re not allowed to photograph people who aren’t famous? Tell me why that’s exploitive. I don’t get it. It’s beyond my understanding.”
Mark bridles at comparisons with the late Diane Arbus, a photographer vilified by some critics as a voyeur. “Why do people do that?” she wonders. “It’s really interesting. I think people say that because we’re both women. You don’t hear that about a man being influenced by Diane Arbus.”
“I don’t know who I am as a person,” Mark admits. “I just hope I’ve been able to make some powerful images after working all these years. I don’t know why I do this.” But then she gives an answer. “You do this because it’s the only thing you can do, and there’s no choice or chance to do anything else. Photography is an obsession for me.”
“You feel your life is ticking away and you could be out there making all these amazing images. I think of all those amazing opportunities. I feel I don’t want life to be over yet. I want more, more.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Mary Ellen Mark/Library.
