Documentary photographer dies at age 75

Mary Ellen Mark often gave a half-joking response when asked why she’d never become a war photographer: “You have to be a fast runner,” she’d say, “and that’s not part of my nature.”

In fact, Mark, who is acknowledged as one of the greatest American documentary photographers, ran from very little. She chronicled homeless families in Los Angeles and runaway children in Seattle, checking in with them over the years and producing stark but empathetic portraits as they aged. For six weeks, she lived in a psychiatric ward with severely disturbed women in Oregon. Over 10 years, she tried in vain to photograph brothels in Mumbai, where prostitutes at last came to trust her so much that they hid her under a bed during a police raid.

Mark, 75, died Sunday in a New York City hospital. She had a blood illness associated with failing bone marrow, her friend Kelly Cutrone told The Associated Press.

Self-effacing and gregarious, Mark sold her work to magazines such as Life and Look when there was a greater appetite for storytelling in black and white from the ends of the Earth and the edges of society.

“She was just interested in people and understanding them on a personal level,” said Lisa Hostetler, the curator in charge of photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., which owns more than 125 prints by Mark.

“She was the ultimate humanist,” Hostetler said. “You could see it in the connection she had with her subjects.”

She is survived by her husband. A previous marriage ended in divorce.