Mary Ellen Mark (March 20, 1940 - May 25, 2015) was an American photographer known for her photojournalism, portraiture, and advertising photography. She was born in Elkins Park, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received a BFA degree in painting and art history from the University of Pennsylvania, in 1962, and a Masters Degree in photojournalism from that university's Annenberg School for Communication, in 1964. The following year, Mark received a Fulbright Scholarship to photograph in Turkey for a year.
Mark had 18 collections of her work published, most notably Streetwise and Ward 81. Her work was exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide and widely published in Life, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, New York Times, and Vanity Fair. She received numerous awards, including three Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 2014 Lifetime Achievement in Photography Award from the George Eastman House and the Outstanding Contribution Photography Award from the World Photography Organisation.
Mark died of myelodysplastic syndrome in Manhattan, on May 25, 2015; she was 75.
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