Man and beast
Subtitle: photographs from Mexico and India
By: Mary Ellen Mark ; interview by Melissa Harris
Contributors: Harris, Melissa
Edition: First edition.
Series: The Southwestern & Mexican photography series; Southwestern & Mexican photography series
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 167
ISBN-13: 9780292756113
Subjects: Social life and customs; Human-animal relationships; Animals; Interviews; Animals (Philosophy); Anthropomorphism; Pictorial works
Description: Man and Beast presents an extended photo essay comprising images from Mexico and India that span some forty years. Many of the Indian images were taken while Mark was working on her classic book Indian Circus (1983), but most of the photographs have never been previously published. Infused with an unsentimental poignancy and a fully intentional anthropomorphism, Mark's photographs of animals, circus performers, children, and others are sometimes ironic, occasionally unsettling, but always remarkably engaging. Accompanying the images are a photographer's statement and a conversation between Mark and Melissa Harris, editor-in-chief of Aperture Foundation, covering Mark's lifelong passion for animals, her experiences photographing them in circuses with their trainers, and her efforts to portray the humanity of animals and the lurking beast within humans.