Remembering Photographer Mary Ellen Mark

A giant of the photography world has passed. We were fortunate enough to have worked with Mary Ellen Mark and the Wittliff Collections on a book of her photographs from India and Mexico, Man and Beast. She had such kind words to say about her experience publishing with us that we feel as if we've lost a loyal friend.

Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015)
Image from Man and Beast

Here is fellow Magnum photographer Eli Reed (A Long Walk Home) on Mary Ellen Mark:

I heard of Mary Ellen Mark's passing late today with some shock and sadness. She was and is one of the foundations of true photojournalism in a time that needed her kind of important additions to what is needed to tell important stories with truth, beauty, and a healthy respect for her subjects. 

They were not just subjects. Many became friends that stayed in touch with her throughout her life. The dimming of her light is an extremely important loss at this time in photographic history. There are so many well meaning professionals and amateurs who have tried to copy the work of photographers that possibly inhabit the same space that she lived in and the well meaning failed for the most part. 

One needed to have the same kind of faith in your own original vision that Mary Ellen Mark displayed time after time. It seems too many photographers did not get that very important memo. Particularly the part of that memo that tells you to get ready for failure so that when victory comes—it will be as sweet as a Georgia peach. 

Mary Ellen could have been a very tough US Marine if she had somehow and for some reason thought to go in that direction but fortunately for the rest of us—she chose the path of being as gentle as the sweetest kiss from a Summer's sweet breeze celebrating the coming of a sultry night. 

Mary Ellen Mark was a magnificent human being who gave, through the work she produced, much more then she received and I mourn her passing. She was a special kind of a living day and night that brings to the front very beautiful mornings. Sweets dreams to her is a good thing.

Read Mary Ellen in conversation with Melissa Harris, editor-in-chief of Aperture Foundation, and Martin Bell, Mark's husband, former politician, and British UNICEF Ambassador, in this excerpt from Man and Beast.

UT Press photo books make Best of 2013

We have a feeling our readers didn't encounter enough 'Best of Lists' across the media landscape at the close of the year. So here's a list of all of the 'Best of 2013 Lists' featuring some of our recent photography books. Allow us to revel in this recognition while we begin placing wagers for which Spring/Summer 2014 photobooks might make it to the best of 2014.

1

American Photo selected five UT Press titles for their 2013 Best Books of the Year:

• The “Reflection” category features Steven Hoelscher’s Reading Magnum, and Amon Carter Museum’s Color: American Photography Transformed. Notable mentions to Roy Flukinger’s Arnold Newman: At Work, and Dan Winters’s America. See the full reflection category on www.americanphotomag.com. >>
• The “Documentary” category features Michael Kamber, Photojournalists on War. See the full documentary category on www.americanphotomag.com. >>

2

• Photojournalists on War made Time LightBox's Best Photobooks of the Year on lightbox.time.com. >>
• Lord George Robertson, former NATO Secretary General, picked Photojournalists on War for the Telegraph UK as his favorite book of the year. Full list on  www.telegraph.co.uk. >>

3

• Color: American Photography Transformed is one of Luc Sante's picks for the year in the New York Times: www.nytimes.com. >>

4

• PDN (Photo District News) chose Donna DeCesare’s Unsettled/Desasosiego as one of their Notable Photo Books of 2013. Read PDN's take on this award-winning photojournalist's 30 years of research and advocacy on www.donnadecesare.com. >>

Publicity Round Up

It’s still hot here in Texas, and media coverage of our books doesn’t show any signs of cooling any time soon. This summer’s food books are still appetizing:

• The Splendid Table talked with Lucinda Hutson about ¡Viva Tequila!. Listen to the interview on splendidtable.org>>
• The Austin Chronicle’s ‘Drink, Drank, Drunk’ issue featured Lucinda's love for Mexico and reviewed the book: “Hutson and her publisher pull out all the stops to create a gorgeous and informative book which will be every bit as much at home on an upscale cocktail table as it will be in the bar area.” Read the article and the book review at Austinchronicle.com>> 
• While perusing your Sunday paper last week, you may have noticed that Barbecue Crossroads was mentioned in an article by John T. Edge on the golden age of barbecue. Read it on parade.com>>

Our spring photography books maintain our good image:

• Cathy Langer of Denver’s Tattered Cover bookstore talked to Photo District News about the quality of our photography books. In the August ‘Photo Book’ issue, Cathy says that she prefers to order from “university presses like Yale or the University of Texas Press, in part because she trusts the production quality of their books.” Pick up a copy of the magazine at your local independent bookstore>> 
• Photos from Bruce Jackson’s Inside the Wire were featured on the website for the Italian magazine Internazionale. View the slideshow on internazionale.it>> 
• The Boston Globe’s Ideas blog wrote about Bruce’s work in southern prisons. Read the post on boston.com>> 
• Photography critic Vince Aletti reviewed Michael Kamber’s Photojournalists on War: “The book—required reading for anyone interested in the way news is gathered and disseminated these days—collects Kamber’s interviews with 39 colleagues who covered the war…confidences shared among friends that we’re privileged to be listening in on.” Pick up a copy of Photograph magazine at your local independent bookstore>>

And finally, the buzz over our forthcoming fall titles has begun!

• James McWilliams, author of The Pecan: A History of America’s Native Nut, had an amusing essay in the July 7th issue of the New York Times Book Review. Read the essay on nytimes.com>> 
• Kirkus Reviews says of David Cantwell’s Merle Haggard: The Running Kind: “An incisive, critical analysis of one of the most complicated and misunderstood artists in country music...Both the Haggard fanatic and the casual country music fan will find their appreciation enriched.” Read the full review on kirkusreviews.com>> 
• Sam Shephard and Johnny Dark’s collection of letters (Two Prospectors) captivated Kirkus: “A bright pathway directly into the hearts and minds of two compelling men.” Read the review on kirkusreviews.com>> 
• Publishers Weekly listed Waltercio Caldas as one of the Top 10 books in Art, Architecture, and Photography for fall. See more fall art titles at publishersweekly.com>>

Photo District News :: Image and Memory

Image and Memory:
Photography from Latin America, 1866-1994

Edited By
Wendy Watriss & Lois Parkinson Zamora
Buy It Now

FotoFest’s latest exhibition Faces of History – Latin America, organized in conjunction with arts>Brookfield Properties , highlights important late 19th and early 20th Century photographers from five Latin American countries – Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. Their works are a profile of change – the mass availability of photography as an instrument for personal portraiture and collective communication and the emergence of new social classes created by the industrial growth of the late 1800s and early 1900s in Latin America. The photographers and their studios were important institutions in their time, recording life across economic and social lines, from native laborers to the wealthy and politically powerful, in these bustling, turn of the century, Latin American cities.

“As photographers ourselves and later founders of FotoFest, we had over 25 years working with photography in Latin America. Its photographic heritage is immensely rich,” says curator and FotoFest co-founder Wendy Watriss. FotoFest did a ground-breaking series of exhibitions on photography by Latin America photographers at the FotoFest 1992 Biennial in Houston. The exhibitions became the basis for a national traveling show and an award-winning bi-lingual book, Photography from Latin America, 1865-1992 published by University of Texas Press (1998).

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