Rangefinder Magazine
January 2006

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Profile: Mark Edward Harris Lou Jacobs Jr.
World Traveler

Kerala, Ind

Professional photographers, especially those adept at portraiture, often wish they could spring free of the studio, travel widely to exotic places, and then arrange their work in beautifully printed books. Mark Edward Harris has done just that. His most recent book, Wanderlust, (RAM Publications, 2004) is a handsome compendium of blackand- white images shot on various treks to Asia, Europe, the South Pacific and the Americas. Among other things, the book jacket says, “Mark has an uncommonly keen eye… without travel photography clichés.”

The photographs in Wanderlust are posed and candid images, often with fascinating backgrounds and some with a fine touch of Cartier-Bresson. They are each on 131/2x9-inch bleed pages. Examples include an outstanding double-page view of the Great Wall of China, children jumping off a sea wall on the tiny atoll of Majuro in the Marshall Islands, a spooky thermal plant in Iceland and majestic Roman ruins in Lebanon. Pages are numbered; short captions appear at the book’s end.

Udipur, India	Boy in Hanoi, Vietnam	Tsunami Survivor, Thailand

Mark Edward Harris grew up in New York and San Francisco. His father worked in radio and television as a publicist. His mother was an editor for magazines and radio, then switched to a career in teaching. Mark recalls, “When our family did road trips, we were always making 8mm movies, and early on I also used 35mm still cameras. This experience had a strong influence on my development as a photographer. These days I’m documenting my trips with both camera and pen.”

Mark became engrossed in photography in college. When he saw prints “coming to life in the developer in a photo class” at Cal State Northridge, his ambitions came into focus. “I knew I loved travel and photography,” he explains, “but I had to figure out how to put them together and make a living. In 1983 after I received my MA in pictorial and documentary history, I worked as a tour operator in the travel industry, sending people to places I eventually visited. After that, I got a job with the Merv Griffin Show and worked there three years. I was the Green Room host and took publicity pictures for the show. I also shot non-union stills on my days off.

“When the show ended I began a four-month journey, islandhopping around the Pacific and Asia, shooting mostly color to build a travel portfolio. Not until the early 1990s did I make a conscious decision to stick with black and white. There’s something in the subjects I shoot that seems to translate better in black and white.”

On his return from the South Pacific, Mark realized that he didn’t quite have all the skills needed to be a successful professional with commercial clients. He decided to get assisting jobs and was fortunate enough to connect with Playboy magazine. He opines, “Regardless of the subject matter, no one can claim that their photographers are not experts in lighting. I was taken under the wing of former staff photographer Kerry Morris, who was not only a great photographer but a great teacher as well. I learned how to work with strobes in all sorts of pictorial situations.”

When Mark stopped assisting at Playboy, he set out on his own and opened a studio in downtown Los Angeles. He says, “I had a number of commercial clients and actually won a CLIO Award for a studio shot I did for a Mexican Airlines ad. But in a few years my love of travel and history pushed me out of the studio and into magazine offices where I pitched stories, dropped off portfolios— but soon the phone began to ring.”

Many of Mark’s published photo essays are history-driven, such as a story on Pearl Harbor survivors, words and pictures about the DMZ between North and South Korea, an account that retraced the first ancient marathon in Greece, and more recently, photographs of tsunami refugee camps in Thailand. Mark adds, “I find it incredibly rewarding to come face to face with history and be able to earn a living documenting it.”

During his professional career his photography made a significant switch from set-up studio style to photojournalism, which has better served his aspirations. Between magazine jobs for LIFE, Stern, Islands, Los Angeles Times Magazine and numerous inflight magazines, he became a contributing editor for Camera and Darkroom magazine. There he first met Horace Bristol from LIFE’s distinguished staff. Bristol’s World War II coverage has become a circulating exhibition in the 21st century, and he and Mark found they had a special connection because both had worked extensively in Japan.

“I am a great admirer of Bristol’s work,” Mark declares. “His sense of humanity shows in his pictures, and I feel he is one of the great masters of our time.” Bristol became one of many outstanding photographers in Mark’s first book, Faces of the Twentieth Century: Master Photographers and Their Work, published by Abbeville Press in 1998. The book won Photography Book of the Year at the New York Book Show plus a Best of Show Award. Among the eminent photographic names in the book are Alfred Eisenstaedt, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Marc Riboud, Helmut Newton, Carl Mydans, Gordon Parks, Annie Leibovitz, Eve Arnold, Joe Rosenthal, Mary Ellen Mark, Andreas Feininger, Elliott Erwitt, Sebastião Salgado and Herb Ritts. Like many readers, I can only envy his contact with those masters.

Mark’s second book, The Way of the Japanese Bath, grew out of a desire to capture an authentic Japanese tradition. He explains, “I also happen to love going to hot springs. Since I speak Japanese fairly well, I could explain to my fellow bathers that I was working on a photography project. Being stripped down to nothing but my Nikon FM2, often with a 28mm lens, made me fairly unobtrusive. I used the totally mechanical camera because of the omnipresent steam and moisture that could potentially give an electronic camera problems.

“Images in the book were taken over a period of several years. I would make a stop in Japan on my way to an assignment in another part of Asia, and I would specifically arrange visits to four or five hot spring areas during a week’s shooting. The hot spring series is a good example of how I immerse myself in a story, no pun intended. I feel you have to develop a special relationship to a long term project to make the time and effort you put into it rewarding, both to you and to viewers of your work.

“I’ve also been very fortunate that editors have often asked me to write stories to go along with my photographs. I love working with writers, but budgets and time constraints don’t always allow for that kind of partnership.”

Mark has been a Nikon user ever since he bought his own camera system around 1980. He adds, “I’m a big fan of Kodak Tri-X and Ilford 50. I use a Fuji S2 for most of my color magazine work, though I’m planning on moving to the new Nikon digital this year. I usually work in black and white unless the assignment calls for color—which I’ve grown to appreciate a lot more, especially with digital, because Photoshop allows you to work with images like you’re in a darkroom.”

Mark Edward Harris likes being peripatetic for his magazine stories, and his work has taken him to many locations in the U.S. and abroad. He keeps current and prospective clients informed and interested with handsome foldout promotional pieces. Each is done in four 4½x6 black-and-white photo panels, excellent examples of visual economy, with one image per panel, bordered with lots of white—no captions, only his name. The images speak for him and themselves.

His web address is: www.markedwardharris.com.