Mary Ellen Mark, 1940– 2015

She was one of the first women to join Magnum, later leaving the agency to control her work.

The NYT Lens blog calls her a "force of nature" over her fifty year career—

Perhaps Ms. Mark’s best-known work was her intimate series on prostitutes in Mumbai, then known as Bombay, that was published in The New York Times Magazine in 1987. She said that the book of those images, "Falkland Road: Prostitutes of Bombay" (Knopf), "“was meant almost as a metaphor for entrapment, for how difficult it is to be a woman."

Lens quotes Mark from its 2012 interview—

"I don’t like gimmicky pictures; I’ve always hated them""...

"I think that's what's happened in photography now, which is too bad. Everything’s become overdone and overcomplicated and over-retouched. You know? There's no retouching in these pictures at all. None. It's all by light. You don't need to retouch if you know how to light."

Lens quotes former Magnum head Charles Harbutt

"I think she would probably be happy that she died working,"” he said. "That would have been a matter of pride for her. She never gave up. She always was out there trying to tell the most important story she could think of as best she could. And that was very good."

CNN offers this gallery, and notes of her final work—

Mark's most recent project was an exploration of New Orleans to mark the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The project will be published later this summer by CNNMoney.