About the Author

The images of Mary Ellen Mark (1940-2015) are icons of documentary and humanistic photography. Mark's more than 20 books include Passport (1974), Falkland Road (1981) and Indian Circus (1993). Her 2015 book Tiny: Streetwise Revisited is a culmination of 32 years documenting Erin Blackwell (Tiny), who featured in Martin Bell's 1985 film Streetwise and Mark's 1988 book of the same name. A dedicated social documentarian and portraitist, she often turned her lens to marginalized communities—circus performers in India, street children in Seattle, the patients of Ward 81, and many others—invariably connecting profoundly with her subjects. Mark's work has been exhibited and published in magazines worldwide. Steidl published The Book of Everything in 2020.


Karen Folger Jacobs, born in Cleveland in 1940, graduated from Antioch College and Boston University before earning a PhD in education at the University of California, Berkeley, where she later served on the faculty. She received four Fulbright awards to teach in colleges in Pakistan and India and has lectured in Europe for UC Berkeley. A licensed therapist, Jacobs was appointed to the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in Washington, D.C., and consults to federal agencies on health issues. Jacobs currently lives and works in Berkeley, California.

Reviews

Chronicle[s] the amassing American mental health crisis and its institutional response in starkness and alienation, yet with a humanity and integrity that came to define Mark's decades of work.--Julia Smith "Flaunt"

The addition of the recorded conversations between Mark and Jacobs and the words of the women of Ward 81 themselves add another layer of complexity, and understanding, to the entire project. When combined with the photographs both from the original book and those newly published for the first time it presents a much more in-depth view of the women suffering mental health issues on Ward 81.--Robert E. Gerhardt "Blind"