Haymarket Square, Boston- an older street snap that I think about now and then.

Todays photographer of the day: Mary Ellen Mark. Happy birthday Mary Ellen! 

from the Wikipedia: Mary Ellen Mark (born March 20, 1940) is an American photographer known for her photojournalism, portraiture, and advertising photography. She has had 16 collections of her work published and has been exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide. She has received numerous accolades, including three Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Mary Ellen Mark was born in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,^[1] and began photographing with a Box Brownie camera at age nine. She attended Cheltenham High School,^[1] where she was head cheerleader and exhibited a knack for painting and drawing. She received a BFA degree in painting and art history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962, and a Masters Degree in photojournalismfrom that university's Annenberg School for Communication in 1964.^[2] The following year, Mark received a Fulbright Scholarship to photograph in Turkey for a year.^[2] While there, she also traveled to photograph England, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain.^[3]

In 1966^[1] or 1967,^[3] she moved to New York City, where over the next several years she photographed Vietnam War demonstrations, the women's liberation movement, transvestite culture, and Times Square, developing a sensibility, according to one writer, "away from mainstream society and toward its more interesting, often troubled fringes".^[3] As Mark explained in 1987, "I'm just interested in people on the edges. I feel an affinity for people who haven't had the best breaks in society. What I want to do more than anything is acknowledge their existence". 

Photography career

Mark became a unit photographer on movie sets, shooting production stills for films including Arthur Penn's Alice's Restaurant (1969), Mike Nichols' Catch-22 (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) among her earliest. For Look magazine, she photographed Federico Fellini shooting his film Satyricon (1969).^[3] Mark has since photographed on the sets of more than 100 movies, up through at least director Baz Luhrmann's Australia (2008).^[6] Mark is well known for establishing strong relationships with her subjects, as she has spoken about after her experiences in the Home for the Dying in Calcutta, and her project "Street Kids" for LIFE Magazine, which developed into the movie Streetwise.^[7]

Mark has published 17 books of photographs; contributed to publications including Life, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair; and her photographs have been exhibited worldwide.^[2] She has served as a guest juror for photography call for entries at The Center for Fine Art Photography. 

Mary Ellen Mark by Anestis Diakopoulos

and here's a good article here that differentiates here from Diane Arbus well: http://fadedandblurred.com/spotlight/from-the-edges-mary-ellen-mark/

Here's to you Mary Ellen!