Indian Circus By Mary Ellen Mark

Indian Circus grew from Mark’s enduring relationship with India. After first traveling there in 1969, she returned repeatedly over the next twenty years. In 1989, supported by grants from the Eastman Kodak Company and the National Endowment for the Arts, she spent six months traveling with eighteen circus companies. Gaining access depended on earning the trust of circus owners in a profession where touring routes and daily life were closely guarded.

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“From my earliest days as a photographer, many of my subjects have been on the edge of, or outside, the mainstream of our culture. Some of them were pushed over the edge due to painful circumstances, and some of them managed to survive even with the most unspeakable and unjust obstacles placed in their lives. I’ve always tried to let my photographs be a voice for people who have less of an opportunity to speak for themselves.” — Mary Ellen Mark

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Mary Ellen Mark (1940–2015) is regarded as one of the leading documentary photographers of her generation. Over five decades, she photographed people whose lives and circumstances differed profoundly from her own. Her work was shaped by long periods of observation and by the relationships she built with the people she photographed. Mark believed that photographs always express a point of view, and that a photographer’s way of seeing is important to creating a great photograph.

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Rather than photographing the performance itself, Mark focused on rehearsals, work, and the moments between. Her photographs reveal the circus as a community shaped by the lives of its performers, children, and animals. Mark described the Indian circus as “a metaphor for everything that has always fascinated me visually,” documenting a way of life that was already beginning to disappear.

Mark wanted her photographs to be understood across cultures without telling viewers what to think. This approach is central to Indian Circus, where the photographs are grounded in time spent with her subjects and in her belief that documentary photography is shaped not by detachment, but by engagement.

In presenting the first solo exhibition of Mary Ellen Mark’s work in Colorado, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center is proud to share this important body of work with new audiences and honor an artist whose approach to documentary photography continues to influence photographers today.

Exhibition support provided by Charles Cannon and Laurie Baxter.

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Mary Ellen Mark achieved worldwide visibility through her numerous books, exhibitions and editorial magazine work. She published photo-essays and portraits in such publications as LIFE, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair. For over five decades, she traveled extensively to make pictures that reflect a high degree of humanism. 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, directed and photographed by her husband, Martin Bell.

Mary Ellen received the 2014 Lifetime Achievement in Photography Award from the George Eastman House as well as the Outstanding Contribution Photography Award from the World Photography Organisation. She has also received the Infinity Award for Journalism, an Erna & Victor Hasselblad Foundation Grant, and a Walter Annenberg Grant for her book and exhibition project on AMERICA. Among her other awards are the Cornell Capa Award from the International Center of Photography, the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Matrix Award for outstanding woman in the field of film/photography, and the Dr. Erich Salomon Award for outstanding merits in the field of journalistic photography. She was also presented with honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees from her Alma Mater, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of the Arts; three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Photographer of the Year Award from the Friends of Photography; the World Press Award for Outstanding Body of Work Throughout the Years; the Victor Hasselblad Cover Award; two Robert F. Kennedy Awards; and the Creative Arts Award Citation for Photography at Brandeis University.

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