The world is filled to the brim with bitter stories, tales of drug addiction and prostitution. These tragedies for a long time have been captured in the big screen. We cannot forget Candy, starring the beautiful Abbie Cornish and the late Heath Ledger. The film gives us the life of a normal couple that gets hooked on heroin, and seeing their tragic destiny unfold has us glued to our seats. Torment and anguish are not far from the dark tales of our modern society.We all wish these tales would only exist in the minds of writers or moviemakers, but unfortunately they happen in real life. Most of us walk on the sidewalks illuminated by a kind destiny, we only have to turn to the dark alleys to know that another reality exists, a painful one.What would happen if one day, as you walked down the street, a stranger approached you and in return for money to buy more drugs they would tell you their life’s story filled with heartbreak, violence, and abuse. The person who dared to face despair and disgrace face to face was the photographer Mary Ellen Mark, who was struck by the life of a 13 year old.
Tiny, Seattle, 1983 by Mary Ellen Mark
In 1983, Mary Ellen began to photograph a group of homeless youth who would spend their days wandering around the streets of Seattle. Many of them were pimps, prostitutes, beggars, and drug dealers. The fruit of her labor was seen in her project Streetwise, that was published in Life magazine in 1984. Later on, the moviemaker Marin Bell would develop a documentary based on Mary’s work.
The story that captured Mary’s heart was the one of a 13 year-old girl prostitute who would get money to pay for her heroin addiction. The photographer was so struck by her case that she followed her for 20 years and captured her evolution in a world that had abandoned her to her miserable destiny.
The moment Mary Ellen met Tiny was electrifying, “They were very young teenagers. They were made up like they were playing dress-up with makeup and short skirts. They were dressed like seductive prostitutes,” she recalls. “I walked too directly and quickly towards her because I wanted to photograph her. She thought I was the police so she screamed and ran away,” she adds. Undeterred, Mary discovered where she lived and the next day she went to look for her and found her with her mother. It was the beginning of a long saga that would bloom until the passing of Mary Ellen Mark in 2015. Mary’s widower, Martin Bell, explains the fated encounter between these two star-crossed souls, “Mary Ellen was always looking for that. There it was. “It” is a presence on camera. To be unafraid to lay bare one’s individuality and essence-vulnerabilities and strengths alike.”
From this fated encounter and clashing of two works a project was born, titled, Tiny: Streetwise Revisited. The photographs capture Tiny with incredible honesty and compassion. The black and white images show a strong teenager trapped by crippling vulnerabilities at the same time. She is exhausted, ingenuous, anguished, and optimistic all at the same time.
Marin Bell’s documentary also poignantly introduces Tiny, who dreams of a horse farm, diamonds and furs, and having ten children. A scene that emanates with innocence, tenderness, and mercy, the teenager turns to her room, goes inside, and changes into a tight and provocative dress. She calls the outfit, “Parisian prostitute.”
Mary Ellen Mark was born on March 20, 1940 in Philadelphia. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts. Two years later she would get a Masters in Journalism. After graduation, she travelled to Turkey with a Fulbright scholarship and she captured the images that would later on become her first book. It was then that Mary would capture an image, which according to her would change her destiny as a photographer.
The photo was of a small girl called Emine, who was walking down the streets of Trabzon dressed with a baby doll and a white hair band. For Mary, there was something dark hidden in the body of a child that had to be revealed.
Maybe, this is why when she spotted Tiny for the first time, she was deeply struck. Her desire to see beyond the surface led her to follow Tiny in her life and to capture every important stage. She was present during Tiny’s pregnancy and when she decided to quit drugs. Through her lens she would capture the difficult stages of her pregnancy and the precious first moments where Tiny fell in love for the first time.
Tiny escaped the grim destiny that awaited her, and while her life might no be in a farm filled with diamonds and furs, she leads a quiet, comfortable and safe life. “My life now is much better,” she says. “I have a husband, Will, who takes care of me and the kids, and I have somewhere to sleep, eat, and take a shower, and I don’t have to worry about money because he works. … It’s kind of boring, but I’d rather be doing what I’m doing now than be running around downtown, looking for my next hit or a place to sleep or eat. So my life is my kids and my husband, the home. And I would never give it up for that type of life ever again.”
Mary Ellen Mark passed away last year, and her legacy is her photographs that at times are shocking, emotional, hard to swallow, but above all else, they are intimate. She touched thousands of souls through her photographs and she gave a face and a name to the cruel and brutal poverty that many have to live with. With Tiny, Mary Ellen found a kindred spirit and her husband agrees, “Tiny and Mary Ellen were a lot alike. Stubborn. Smart. Independent. The understood each other.” When asked in an interview with Darkroom Magazine why she was drawn to people from disadvantaged subcultures she revealed her shining and tenderhearted spirit, “Much of life is luck. No one can choose whether he’s born into a wealthy, privileged home or born into extreme poverty. I guess I’m interested in people who haven’t had as much of a chance because they reach out more, they need more. They touch me. I do a lot of other work to support myself, but those kinds of projects are the reasons I became a photographer.”
If you’re interested in seeing more of Mary Ellen Mark’s work, visit her official website.
