Sabiha Çimen and Mary Ellen Mark: The Girls

An exhibition of portraits by the legendary Mary Ellen Mark and the acclaimed Sabiha Çimen celebrates the timeless activities of girlhood at Howard Greenberg Gallery this spring. Sabiha Çimen and Mary Ellen Mark: The Girls will be on view from April 2 through May 9, 2026. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, April 2, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

While the portraits of American photographer Mary Ellen Mark are well known, the exhibition marks the first gallery show in the U.S. of Sabiha Çimen, a self-taught artist from Turkey. Both women photograph people living within tightly defined social worlds, and the pairing of the two photographers highlights the universal nature of being a girl.

The two photographers never met, but their careers intertwined briefly in 2015, when Çimen was asked by a curator to locate a Turkish girl photographed in 1965 by Mark (Beautiful Emine Posing, Trabzon, Turkey). The curator was curious about her life: who she had become, whether she had a family, and what remained of that fleeting moment captured in the image. Çimen, who was not yet a photographer, successfully located Mark’s now grown subject after a series of phone calls.

By then, Emine was a grown woman, married, with children of her own. She recalled the encounter with remarkable clarity. As a child playing in the street, she remembered a foreign “tourist looking” woman elegantly dressed, carrying a camera who spent time with them, gently observing and photographing. Only years later did that brief meeting reveal its lasting significance.

Mark’s work spanned five decades and dozens of countries. On view are images from some of her most iconic series including selections from Streetwise, the 1983 project focusing on the lives of homeless kids in Seattle; Ward 81, the 1976 series documenting the lives of female patients at the Oregon State Mental Hospital; and Prom, a sweeping look at American prom culture photographed between 2006 and 2009. Adding to the mix are circus performers in India, beauty pageant contestants, and beach boardwalk denizens.

While Mark captured her images in black and white, pastel color floods every frame of Çimen’s work. Çimen’s images of girls’ Qur’an schools—collected in her award‑winning 2021 series Hafiz—explore a world that marked by strict routine yet is unexpectedly playful. Her photographs blend documentary precision with poetic surrealism, revealing the interior lives, daily rituals, friendships, and dreams of young Muslim girls in Turkey.

“Across different generations and geographies, Mary Ellen Mark and I share a curiosity about the inner lives of girls,” Çimen noted. “The delicate threshold of girlhood exists in a suspended moment between innocence and self-discovery. While our photographs were made in different worlds, Mary Ellen and l meet in a shared attention to the emotional terrain of growing up, the inner worlds of girls where vulnerability, imagination, and resilience quietly unfold.”