COUNTRY OF BIRTH

United States

INDUSTRY

Photography

TOP ACHIEVEMENTS

One of the 20th Century's Greatest Photographers
Mary Mark Allen is one of the most respected and well known photographers of our generation. She has attained notoriety through countless exhibitions, books, and magazine appearances, appearing in The New York Times Magazine, LIFE, The New Yorker, TIME, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair. From an early age she travelled the world documenting what she saw in black and white. In 1965 Mark Allen received a Fulbright Scholarship to photograph in Turkey for a year. While there she took one of her most famous images, Street Child, which she later credited as being the photo that made her. The following year she moved to New York, where she developed her own individual style. She photographed the Vietnam War demonstrations, the woman's liberation movement and Time Square, along with transvestites and prostitutes. Her focus on people on the fringes of society would go on to become her trademark.

Champion for Society's Most Vulnerable
The subject of Mary Mark Allen's award-winning photography was regularly prostitutes and children of the streets. Over three trips to India, starting in 1968, she documented the work of Mother Teresa with the prostitutes of Bombay. She published her work in two highly acclaimed books in 1981 and 1985, titled 'Falkland Road' and 'Photographs of Mother Teresa’s Missions of Charity in Calcutta'. In 1982 Mark produced an inspiring piece for Life magazine that followed runaway children living on the streets of Seattle. This work spawned the making of the documentary film Streetwise in 1984. In 1976 Mark Allen undertook one of her most famous projects. She lived in a high-security women’s ward at the Oregon State Hospital for two months to document the lives of the mentally ill women that were confined to the ward. Her black and white book Ward 81 (1979), received critical acclaim for her objective and compassionate portrayal of these woman.