Fall/Winter 2024 Exhibition
Mary Ellen Mark: A Seattle Family, 1983-2014
October 10, 2024 - January 27, 2025
Fenway Gallery
Mary Ellen Mark, one of the great American photojournalists, frequently turned her lens to those who had been pushed to the margins of society. This fall, the Gardner Museum brings the story of Mark and one of her long-time personal and artistic partnerships to the Fenway Gallery from October 10, 2024 – January 20, 2025.
In 1983, Erin Blackwell, known as “Tiny,” was a 13-year-old girl escaping a difficult home life and living on the streets of Seattle, Washington. At the time, Mark was working on a story for LIFE about unhoused runaway teenagers in what was considered America’s “most livable city.” Mary Ellen Mark’s chance meeting with Erin in a discotheque parking lot would be the catalyst for a remarkable, deeply personal relationship. Over the next 30 years, Erin let Mark document her life. Through pregnancies and addictions, hardships and love, Mark chronicled Erin’s growing, changing family with unflinching empathy, making visible the tangled nature of human connections and the reality of poverty in the United States.
The exhibition Mary Ellen Mark: A Seattle Family, 1983–2014 invites visitors to empathize with the struggles and triumphs of a multi-racial American family, and to feel the trust and inspiration that blossomed between Erin Blackwell and Mary Ellen Mark—a relationship that transcended that of artist and collaborator.
About the Artist
Photo Credit: ©Martin Bell
Mary Ellen Mark (American, 1940-2015) was an award-winning and internationally renowned American photographer and photojournalist. Her portraits and photo essays have been published in LIFE, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and more. Her photo essay on runaway children in Seattle was the basis for the Academy Award-nominated film Streetwise. For over five decades, Mark traveled extensively to capture humanity and turn an unflinching eye towards those who have been marginalized by society. Her images have become landmarks in the field of documentary photography and she is recognized as one of our most respected and influential photographers.
Mary Ellen Mark: A Seattle Family, 1983–2014 is supported in part by the Ford Foundation, Amy and David Abrams, and the Barbara Lee Program Fund.
The Museum receives operating support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
