OBIT: In memory of Mary Ellen Mark

One of the most respected and influential documentary photographers to date, Mary Ellen Mark, died on May 25 in New York. She was 75. For fifty years, she showed the rare gift of making all her assignments, the given ones and the self-generated projects, very personal and deep. "I worked on them because they were interesting to me," she said, when I had the honor to interview her a couple of years ago.

The last few years of her life were a race against time to complete the projects she wanted to do using the tools she wanted to use before it was too late. This was the case of her latest book, titled "Prom," which was shot with a Polaroid 20x24 Land Camera and published in 2012 by Getty Publications. There are only five 20x24 Polaroid cameras in the world. Polaroid discontinued the film while Mark was working on the project. She bought the last stock of traditional Polaroid black and white paper and for the very last photos she used handmade film made using original Polaroid components and production equipment. 

Mark always refused to move to digital. "Photography is about the content. Not about the tools. I'm not against digital photography, but I have been using analog for so long? Analog photography and digital photography are different and I strongly believe that people should learn both," she said. Stubbornly refusing the speediness of digital to stick with the thoughtful slowness of film meant receiving fewer and fewer magazine assignments, as the industry's visual voracity could not afford to stop and wait, not even for the sensitivity, commitment and talent of someone like Mark.

Not many people know that Mark's photographic career began in Turkey in 1965, when she traveled around the country on a Fulbright scholarship. Her photos ...