Mary Ellen Mark | Aperture Ram Prakash Singh with his elephant Shyama. Great Golden Circus, Ahmedabad. 1990.
“I’m always looking for something that’s a little on the strange side, some kind of tension or a feeling that i
(...) s slightly off-putting. This picture of the elephant and his trainer is one of my most well-known pictures from the Indian circus. He had the elephant perform that for me (I think he was showing off). But what makes the portrait work so well is the elephant’s expression. I took several pictures of this act, so much so that the elephant got fed up. He looked at me from the side as if to say, ‘Ugh, Mary Ellen, that's enough. This is your last frame.’ Afterward, the trainer insisted that I get my picture taken with the elephant’s trunk around me. It was very heavy!”
- Mary Ellen Mark © Mary Ellen Mark
