Artist Log - Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark

Mark shows what's like to be living on the road, whether thats part of a circus o on your own, she shows danger and hardship. Children raising babies on the street and life threatening situations are all apart of what makes Mark's work so unique. 

We can see here life living with a circus, animals everywhere and people practising their acts for the nights show, this image separates the person from the hippo, one act from another. 

Mark's shows what it's like to live with overt, to be on the streets and as a child being responsible for another life. This image creates a story in your head as you wonder how these girls got to the place that they are, where are their parents and is that her child etc. 

This is another image taken from the life of a circus performer, we can see that most of the performers live in poverty as there is nothing else in the image, it's literally nothingness, dust, old tents and few performers can be seen. 

This image is quite creepy, as many people fear clowns in general and then to see one in this situation holding a gun to a child. Here I think Mark is trying to show that the circus life can be very dangerous for child, not necessarily from people but the poverty that they live in is bad, as the clown represents the circus life and the child is meant to be any child living the circus life. 

Mark's has influenced me in the way that I can use imagery to show evidence, especially with the last image, it gives me some ideas to what i would like to do and how I can use something to show something very different entirely.

To summarise Mark's work, I would say that I really enjoy how creepy it is to look at, even when there is no real danger present in the photo, Mark still finds a way to put you on edge.