Category Archives: documentary photographer

Feb 25

The story of the girl in Mary Ellen Mark’s iconic photo

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Amanda and her Cousin Amy: Mary Ellen Mark photographed Amanda Marie Ellison, 9 (right), and Amy Minton Velasquez, 8, in Valdese, North Carolina, in 1990.

(Courtesy of Mary Ellen Mark Studio and Library)

A good photograph can speak volumes about its subjects, yet still leave you wanting to know more.

The acclaimed and prolific American photographer Mary Ellen Mark, who died May 25 at the age of 75, was known for her humanist portraits: homeless children in Seattle, prostitutes in India, a family living out of its car. In 1990, she took one of her most memorable shots, titled Amanda and her cousin Amy.

“This photograph raises a lot of questions and leaves me with a slightly uneasy feeling,” says Jeff Jacobson, a New York photographer and a friend of Mark’s. “That, I feel, over and over again is the hallmark of her best work.”

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Jul 23

The power of a single photograph: Auggie’s photo album

I so love this memorably wonderful scene from Smoke (1995) featuring Harvey Keitel and William Hurt… I hope you do too…

You know how it is…

Tomorrow tomorrow and tomorrow,

Time creeps on its petty pace.

In Auggie’s New York smoke shop, days pass, seemingly unchanging – until he teaches us to notice the little details of life…

May 13

Amazing flash street photography

Chicago Lights: Flash Street Photography by Satoki Nagata snow multiple exposures light Chicago black and white

Chicago-based photographer Satoki Nagata has produced a series of abstract, black and white street portraits of people caught in the winter elements.

Nagata says that he lights his subjects from behind with a flash using a slow shutter speed and doesn’t rely on double exposures or glass reflections as it may appear.

The results are some pretty striking photographs of people who look nearly transparent yet appear to be almost perfectly surrounded by a crisp halo of light.

Here are more examples of Satoki’s amazing flash street photography:

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May 10

Baby, it’s cold outside: evocative documentary photography at -35°C

Temperatures fall sharply the Nenets may spend days in the same place

The Nenets — who live at daily temperatures of -35°C (-31°F) in northern Siberia, wash just once a year and eat raw reindeer liver to survive — are documented in beautiful black and white monochrome photographs made by photographer Sebastião Salgado, possibly the best-loved photojournalist in the world.

Reviewer Laura Cummings says of his subjects:

These people endure the coldest temperatures imaginable. They stand like statues, apparently frozen still, positioned against the snowbound winds that drive the snow across the picture in silvery blizzards. They stand, and they withstand.

(And mainland Australians think my island home of Tasmania is cold!)

More images from this remarkable series follow…

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May 5

Photography threatens fantasy – or does it?

With her American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, Taryn Simon goes on the hunt for America’s dirty secrets.

Gaining entrance to places as diverse as a white tiger breeding facility, the JFK Airport quarantine area and virus-research labs, Simon shows the things that are integral to America’s foundation, mythology and daily functioning, but remain inaccessible or unknown to a public audience.

Meanwhile, in her earlier book The Innocents, she shot portraits of more than 80 wrongly accused death-row inmates who were exonerated by DNA testing, and investigated photography’s role in that process.

At issue here was the question of photography’s function as a credible eyewitness and arbiter of justice.

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