Mary Ellen Mark | Ward 81

Exhibition Dates: September 6 – October 6, 2007

The gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of work by Mary Ellen Mark in Canada. For almost three decades, she has traveled extensively to make pictures that reflect a high degree of humanism. Today, she is recognized as one of our most respected and influential photographers. Her images of our world's diverse cultures have become landmarks in the field of documentary photography. Her portrayals of Mother Teresa, Indian circuses, and brothels in Bombay were the product of many years of work in India. A photo essay on runaway children in Seattle became the basis of the academy award nominated film STREETWISE (1985), directed and photographed by her husband, Martin Bell.

Our exhibition is from one of her earliest series. In 1975, photographer Mary Ellen Mark was assigned by a magazine to do a story on the making of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, shot on location at the Oregon State Hospital, a mental institution. While there, she met, briefly, the women of Ward 81.

Ward 81 is the women's security ward of the hospital, the only locked ward for women in the state. The women on this ward are considered dangerous to themselves or to others.

In February of 1976, Mary Ellen and Karen Folger Jacobs, a writer and social scientist, were given permission to live on the ward in order to photograph and interview the women. They spent thirty-six days on Ward 81. A monograph of this work was published by Simon and Schuster in 1979.

In 2005 Phaidon released ‘Exposure’, here 15^th book, a compendium of her iconic portraits of America. She has exhibited internationally for over 4 decades and her work is found in the permanent collections of most major institutions. Amongst her many awards and grants, she has been the recipient of: the Cornell Capa Award by the International Center of Photography; the Infinity Award for Journalism; an Erna & Victor Hasselblad Foundation Grant; a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship; and the Dr. Erich Salomon Award for outstanding merits in the field of journalistic photography.