AMERICANSUBURB X: THEORY: “Mary Ellen Mark – 25 Years (1990)”:
Mary Ellen Mark is a photographer who believes that her strongest essay will be her next one. In a sense, all her work is one journey to that “best” story, which she may never reach or let herself acknowledge. She works with an edge, a haunting dissatisfaction: Could the pictures be better? What is important? Does she have it? Has she gotten to the core? Modest by nature, she uses the word perhaps a lot and the phrase “I was lucky” a great deal. But the success of her career is the result of more than luck – rather, it’s a knowing rush toward the unknown.