The Lives of Women

The American photographer Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015) is one of the most important representatives of humanist, committed photography in the 20th century. From the 1960s onwards, she portrayed the lives of people on the margins of society with great sensitivity and empathy. Her groundbreaking reportages, which she published in magazines such as Life, Rolling Stone and Stern, usually focused on women and girls, into whose often precarious lives she deeply immersed herself. In doing so, she was more than just a witness; she became an advocate for her protagonists.