Since the Crimean War, there have been photographers documenting and crafting iconic images to present to the public, as representations of war, its consequences and its horrors. Sometimes, photographers veered away from strict documentary photography in favor of a more artistic slant, as in the case of Civil War photographer Matthew Brady. In some of his photographs of dead soldiers on battlefields, the photographer moved the bodies into more favorable compositions and had some of his friends and colleagues pose amongst the corpses so as to make the battlefield appear more populated.

Mary Ellen Mark has traveled around the world on assignments, capturing sub-cultures of outcasts, freaks, misfits and wunderkinds with her cameras. Whether it’s pictures of Bombay prostitutes or the elderly in Miami nursing homes, photos of circus trainers with their animals or behind the scenes glimpses of celebrities in Hollywood, her documentary portraiture aims to make us feel that her exotic subjects share an emotional commonality with their audience.