Tiny blowing a bubble, Seattle, 1983

Tiny blowing a bubble, Seattle, 1983

“I first met Tiny in the parking lot of a club called the Monastery. Most of the street kids could not afford to pay the cover charge, and many were underage. They used to make their own club in the Monastery’s parking lot. They would run from car to car, drink, do drugs, and have their own party. One Friday night at the Monastery a taxi pulled up, and Tiny and a girlfriend stepped out.  

Tiny was an extraordinary-looking child. She was only thirteen and indeed very tiny. She was dressed like a grown-up. I tried to talk to her, but she thought I was the ‘po-lice’ and ran away. I found out that she occasionally lived with her mother, and when she wasn’t living with her mother, she survived on the streets as a child prostitute. I found her the next day at her mother’s house.  

This photograph was taken several months after I first met Tiny. My husband, Martin, returned to Seattle to make Streetwise, a film about street kids in which Tiny is the main character. This photograph was taken during his final days of shooting. It was Halloween, and Tiny had pieced together her costume. In her own words, she wanted to look ‘like a French whore.’”

—Mary Ellen Mark, Exposure

This image appears in Mary Ellen Mark’s monograph Tiny: Streetwise Revisited, published by Aperture in 2015.
© Mary Ellen Mark / The Mary Ellen Mark Foundation

In celebration of Aperture’s seventieth anniversary, we are pleased to offer this limited-edition print as part of the seventy x seventy print sale. This sale offers a rare opportunity for art enthusiasts to collect original works by some of the most celebrated and influential photographers in the history of the medium while supporting Aperture. Each print is available in an edition of seventy, signed by the artist or estate-stamped. Proceeds from the sale benefit the artist and/or a designated charity of their choice, and provide support for Aperture’s not-for-profit publishing, educational, and public programs.

These works are available to collect through September 30 while prints in the edition remain available.

Image size: 9.3 x 6.3 inches
Paper size: 8 x 10 inches
Edition of 70 and 5 Artist’s Proofs
Archival pigment print
Estate stamped on a label

Printed by Laumont Editions in New York.

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Black and white wood framing options are available for an additional $100.
Please allow an additional 3 weeks for framed orders to ship.
Mat dimensions: 10 x 12 inches
Frame dimensions: 11 x 13 inches

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Contact prints@aperture.org with any inquiries about the edition or questions regarding shipping.
An adult signature is required for delivery of all limited edition prints.

Mary Ellen Mark (born in Philadelphia, 1940; died in New York, 2015) is one of the most respected and influential photographers of our time. Her images of our world’s diverse cultures have become landmarks in the field of documentary photography. Her portrayals of Mother Teresa, Indian circuses, and brothels in Bombay were the product of many years of work in India. Above all, her work is about forging intimacy in even the darkest situations. A photo-essay on runaway children in Seattle became the basis of the Academy Award–nominated film Streetwise, directed and photographed by her husband, Martin Bell. Her many books include the Aperture titles Streetwise (1988), American Odyssey (1999), and Twins (2003). Shortly before her death, she completed what would become the last two books authored by her: Tiny: Streetwise Revisited (Aperture, 2015) and Mary Ellen Mark on the Portrait and the Moment (Aperture, 2015). In 2020, Steidl published The Book of Everything, the largest collection of Mark’s photographs ever published and the first of several planned posthumous titles.