In the past week, much has been said about the work of Mary Ellen Mark. The photographer, who passed away on May 25 at the age of 75, left behind an astounding body of work, extensive in scope and tender in focus. “My goal is to make images that stand on their own, not to tell a particular story,” Mark said in an interview for “Everybody Street,” a recent documentary about iconic street photographers in which she features prominently. “I think film tells a story. Still pictures should be single, very powerful images, and I’ve always felt that way.”Musing about Mark’s powerful oeuvre over the past week, my mind kept returning to one project and, in particular, the film that followed. In July 1983, Time Magazine published Mark’s “Streets of the Lost,” a photo-essay documenting homeless youth in Seattle, Washington. The journalist Cheryl McCall accompanied Mark on the trip, reporting on the lives of the children being photographed, many of who had resorted to crime, including prostitution, to survive.A month later, the two returned to Seattle with Mark’s husband, Martin Bell. The three had decided to make a film about the kids, which they shot over the next four months. Partially funded by the country singer Willie Nelson and whittled down from 50 hours of celluloid, “Streetwise” (1984) went on to be nominated for an Oscar in the Best Documentary category.Today the film is hardly remembered, receiving barely a footnote in most recent remembrances of Mark. Partly, this is because of its unavailability — it exists only on VHS and has never been released on DVD. For many years, “Streetwise” was like a rumor, something many people talked about but few had actually seen. Fortunately, it can now be watched online, although the quality of the Web version is not the best — it appears to have been transferred from a VHS copy — and who knows when it might disappear as well.Mark specialized in capturing the hidden faces that peak from behind the curtain of the American Dream. Her images depict a tweaked normality: a cigarette in the hand of a not-yet-teenager, a gun in the hand of one not much older. But as photographs, they have a certain rigidity, highlighting a failure of the medium. The one detail that turns a photo of a child from something innocent into something dangerous is stripped of context. Although, as critic Susie Linfield writes in her defense of photojournalism, “The Cruel Radiance,” “[e]very image of suffering says not only, ‘This is so,’ but also, by implication: ‘This must stop,’ ” it also swims in a sea of “devastating paradox.” If, as Linfield goes on to say, “seeing does not necessarily translate into believing, caring, or acting,” then Mark’s images of suffering become more complex.“Streetwise” is equally complex but in a different way. It provides the narrative missing from Mark’s photographic images. The kids who populate the film — among them Tiny, a 14-year-old prostitute who dreams of a life of fur coats and diamonds, and Rat, her playful sometimes boyfriend who roller-skates around an abandoned squat and begs for change on the street — are not just shown but also heard. Their words, presented in conversations and arguments caught on camera, as well as in persistent and eerie voice-overs, give them more control over how we view their lives — although the filmmakers ultimately shape what and how we see, the subjects are allowed a certain amount of agency over how we look.The film can also to go deeper and further than a photograph. A single image of Tiny, no matter how arresting, cannot record the changes in her face as she grapples with her alcoholic mother or hear the quiet triumph in Rat’s voice as he describes how to avoid eating rotten food when raiding dumpsters. We see the children ignored by people, who pass by on the street without a hint of acknowledgement. We see the way they walk, the way their bodies stiffen in the presence of authority and crumble when they are alone.In 2013, Mark and Bell raised $85,136 via Kickstarter for a new project, a portrait of Erin “Tiny” Blackwell, the most riveting and popular of the street kids from the original photo series and film. Tiny reportedly now has 10 children and still lives in Seattle. No word yet on when the new film will be released, but when it is, along with the release of “Streetwise Revisited” by Aperture this fall, it will be a fitting cap to Mary Ellen Mark’s legacy.
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