Ward 81 [Mary Ellen Mark]

[Landmark] [Bummer] [Photography]

Ward 81

Mary Ellen Clark

Fireside Books, NY. 1979. First paperback edition. Creasing and minor soiling to edges of cover and text block. Binding tight. A very good copy.

From the author:

"In the unblinking compassion of her camera, their faces reflect the kaleidoscope of human emotion -bewilderment, love, pain, joy, anger, even a light-hearted mimicry of the contorted mask we call madness. These might be the faces, Mary Ellen Mark is telling us, of ourselves and our friends. In fact, they are the faces of women whose moods often go haywire, whose human impulses catapult to such extremes that they exceed the arbitrary limits society has set on sanity. One woman communes with the buzzard she is convinced resides under her bed. Another woman, believing herself pregnant, bares her stomach to the television set so that the unborn child can watch "Sesame Street" with her. A third woman, in a moment of self-loathing, seizes a shard of glass and carves the word "hate" from the flesh of her arm.

These women are patients in Ward 81, the maximum security section of the Oregon State Hospital. For 36 days, Mary Ellen Mark lived with them, sharing and recording their moods. Though Mark is best known as a photojournalist, her aim was not to document the problems of mental illness nor even to tell a story in the usual sense. "Instead of the 1-2-3-4 of a picture story, I was interested in doing pictures that would stand alone," she recalls. "Looking back now, I feel that the pictures are almost like a scrapbook, a memory of a certain time in my life and in theirs. I wanted to help these women make contact with the outside world by letting them reach out and present themselves. I didn't want to use them. I wanted them to use me."

A landmark photo book that presents the lives of these women as they navigate the mental health system of Oregon very likely for the rest of their lives. Sad stuff, this world. A poignant document of the many ways a human can lose themself.