“STREETWISE”;

Surviving, Living, and the Victims in Between

 

In Mary Ellen Mark’s photobook “STREETWISE,” Mark became interviewed, followed, and became friends with the street kids of Seattle in the 80’s to create a piece for LIFE magazine on runaway children.

 

Mark (1940-2015) was born in Elkins Park, PA and began photographing at age 9 on an early Kodak camera. She showed incredible promise with drawing and painting in high school before earning a BFA in painting and art history from University of Pennsylvania and an eventual masters in photojournalism from the same University. After her Fulbright Scholarship where she photographed Turkey and other European countries, Mark returned to the US and made a career for herself by photographing folks on the fringes of society. She covered rallies, political marches, arrests, and more. One of these projects, commissioned by LIFE magazine, eventually became “STREETWISE”. Mark and her partner, Cheryl McCall, chose Seattle because it was considered to be the nation’s “most livable city”; that if there is a street kid problem here, there could be one anywhere. They chose the kids that they followed almost entirely by accident: they kids were the first group they stumbled upon after days driving through the city. They chose to continue the project—and, indeed, later develop their work into a film—because they ended up falling in love with the kids and their stories. Mark admired their strength and was deeply intrigued by the complexity and emotional turbulence in their lives. 

   

 

And yet, in the Introduction to “STREETWISE”, John Irving uses the phrase “perfect victims” to describe the children. Indeed, he goes on to argue that, “the characters in any important story are always victims; even the survivors of an important story are victims,” introducing a  connection, and perhaps a causality, between victims and survivors. A survivor is the older version of a victim. But when does one cross that threshold from victim to survivor? And what does Mark’s photographs contribute to that discussion? Did she see her subjects as victims or survivors?

 

In the 80’s when Regan was ushered into office and abortion discussions were raging about, I think Mary Ellen Mark heard all of this uproar for the rights of the unborn and chose to look at the born. Mark’s work in “STREETWISE” photographs these children, thus, as survivors of being born and investigates the difference between survival, living, and victimization in their lives. 

Stephanie,

This is a good beginning for your project. I’m glad that you liked Streetwise. You ask a number of good questions about survivors and victims and about the role of photography in identifying them (or changing perceptions of them). I think that you also ought to pay attention to gender in your discussion.

A couple of pointers going forward, and to edit this first page:

you need a title for the project

you need to include some specific photographs

you need to give a bit of background on Mark as a photographer (including birth and death dates)

I will be interested to see what elements of the photographs interest you, what you plan to do with your final project.

DDM

 

Mark once said, “I’ve always felt that children and teenagers are not ‘children,’ they’re small people. I look at them as little people and I either like them or I don’t like them.” This sense of trust and honesty with her subjects is part of what allowed mark to get the kind of intimate photographs of her subjects as she did. For “STREETWISE”, Mark had to follow and gain the trust of the kids before they allowed her to photograph them. Indeed, they didn’t fully trust her until they saw her and her partner Cheryl stand up to some policemen who tried to ticket Mark for jaywalking, and until Tiny (one of the leaders of the street kids) decided to trust her. The photographs follow after an actual, honest relationship built with the subject, and the subject must continue to have total agency while being photographed.

 

Mark also talked with the kids while she photographed them, and seems to photograph them based on what they are saying. There are few candies and few, truly posed photos. It seems as though Mark just followed where the kids led; most of the photographs are of the kids showing something to Mark (be it a friend, a dynamic, a story, a location, etc). She lets them lead. But sometimes, the result of this “following the leader” approach ends in a semi-staged photograph. For example, in the photograph of Tiny in her bed with the big “16” on her shirt, she had been talking to Tiny about why Tiny can’t come live with her. Tiny, ultimately rejecting the idea herself, plopped down on her bed saying, “I could never leave the street,” whereupon Mark took that one last photograph of her. 

 

 

With the constraints of the pandemic, I am planning on photographing my two younger sisters (one of whom is 17, and the other is 13). I want to follow Mark’s methods of letting the subject lead and decide what to take photos of. I am thinking about basing the photographs in their rooms, similar to the photographs of Tiny and her family, so they can show me their environment and lead me through their methodology (why they decorated the way they did, what pieces of furniture serve what functions, what memories do they have here, etc). I am also thinking of observing how they interact with my folks. Each of them is closer to one parent and I really want to photograph that dynamic (similar to the photographs of Tiny and her mother that reveal their strained relationship). Finally, I want to record the interviews I have with them. I love Mark’s decision to put the children’s words next to the photographs in lieu of a title. It makes the experience all about the children, all the way through. 

 

In my house, where we are quarantined strictly, I hope to explore the dialectic between surviving and living, and exploring what victimization means, similar to how Mark did with the street kid crisis. I want to explore which routines in their life are for survival, which are for fun, and where they overlap. 

Stephanie,

Your methodology sounds ambitious (I hope that your siblings don’t reject the idea and refuse to cooperate, since you don’t have as much time as Mark had). I like the idea of doing interviews and then excerpting from them next to the photographs. And you MUST add photographs to your webpages. No one can understand what you’re talking about without seeing the images.

DDM

Photos & Analysis: Presentation of your own photographs inspired by that point of view. Text articulating what taking your own pictures taught you about the photographer’s point of view and its relevance. What is liberating about the point of view you’ve chosen to explore? How does it challenge you to look at the world differently?

I think I’ve come to understand the difficulties of photojournalism and catching someone in their environment. It took a good fifteen or twenty minutes before the subject, my sister, stopped noticing the camera and just started acting “normally” speaking to me “normally.” I think something that helped was holding my camera at waist level so that I could still interact with my sister face to face; it subdued the pressures of being photographed for her. I think Mary Ellen Mark had to have been an incredibly charismatic and genuine person to get capture the kind of behavior she did from anyone, let alone children. The younger people are, the more easily they can read your intent, I’ve realized. So it’s vital for a photographer to be as upfront and genuine as possible, as this sense is only magnified by carrying a camera.

In regards to methodology, I thought it was great fun to record the interview as well. I loved picking pieces of text in the subject’s own words to go with the photographs. Interviewing someone while photographing them is a bit like trying to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time, though, which is why it was helpful to have the subject steer the conversation and show me what she wanted documented.

 

*I’m so sorry–I don’t know if it’s the site or my technological ineptitude but I really could not make the slideshow work. I still ordered them in the way I wanted (left to right, resetting at the beginning of each row). My apologies.

 

Stephanie,

I am glad that you have come to realize the challenges of photographing and interviewing at the same time. Photographers like Mark really engaged with their subjects as people along with seeing them. The process of picturing someone is truly complex. I will be interested to see some of your interviews as part of your presentation and analysis of the photographs. I realize that this is not quite complete since you don’t yet have your slide show up.

DDM

Conclusion: Did you come to understand your Jewish photographer differently after taking your own photos? What did you learn about your thesis?

After photographing my own subject in the style of Mark, I certainly have a newfound respect for her. It is incredibly difficult to photograph people (the younger the harder) in a way that makes them feel at least unaware of the camera and at best empowered by it. One thing I realized, though, is that your subject is never going to forget that there is a camera there and perhaps that can work in the photographer’s favor. The shots I liked most that I took were the shots where my subject wanted to demonstrate something for the camera as opposed to the shots I took of things she had or candid shots. I now think that it’s not about making the subject forget that they’re being photographed because that’s simply not true; to pretend you’re not is a form of lying and, especially since Mark was photographing children, you can lose a subjects trust by pretending you’re not.

I look back on her photographs now and see that there is a performative element to many of them, especially of Tiny who often poses dramatically and stares right into the camera. In that, there is a kind of power, a transition from victim to survivor. It is the subject saying “look at me and my life” and the photographer giving the subject a platform to be heard. It would be exploitative if the children were unaware of the camera or didn’t take pride in being photographed, because they would then be victims to their situation and the photographer capitalizing on their situation. But the street kids in Mark’s work know. They know exactly what Mark’s intentions are and use it as a vehicle to mark themselves as survivors. Mark smartly gives them this agency by being completely honest and not hiding her camera or intentions and they take that opportunity to empower themselves.

Therefore, to reflect on my earlier thesis, I don’t think there are any victims in this book. I think that, even if the kids considered themselves victims before this, the act of bearing witness to their own lives and bravely allowing someone else to document it makes them survivors. Mark seems to know this and–by earnestly gaining the kid’s trust, not concealing her camera, and letting her subjects dictate what they want photographed–turns this book into an honoring of these children’s grit, personalities, hardships, and joys.

 

Stephanie,

Excellent conclusion. It is bold of you to revise your initial thesis as a result of what you learned from taking photographs. I think that you are insightful about the dynamic of performance in Mark’s photographs and the way that serves to empower the subjects of her photos. In a sense, it is a bit like Goldin’s offer to her friends to be their mirror, to give them the power that photography provides to see themselves. In Mark’s case, it is as you write: these street kids are survivors who can bear witness through Mark to their own lives.

Please identify Mark’s photographs when you make revisions in the final project.

DDM

Sources: List of all your sources with hyperlinks. Be sure to separate photo sources from written research sources.

Esterly, Jerry. “Foreword.” Streetwise, Aperture, 1992, p. xv.

Irving, John. “Introduction.” Streetwise, Aperture, 1992, p. xviii.

Mark, Mary Ellen, and Nancy Baker. Streetwise. Aperture, 1992.

Mark, Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen Mark – Biography- Resume, www.maryellenmark.com/bio_resume/bio_resume.html.