Mary Ellen Mark’s look at sex work, heroin use and Mother Teresa

With a cigarette in her hand, nine-year-old Amanda stares at us, her gaze intense, clouds of smoke snaking out of her mouth. She is standing in the inflatable children’s pool. Another child is splashing in the water next to her, her eight-year-old cousin. Mary Ellen Mark met the girl at a school for difficult-to-educate children, where she was on behalf of the Life Magazine photographed. “The most interesting kid in the class,” Mark said later. At home she wore nail polish and makeup – bossing her mother around. Amanda was the head of the family. Every 45 minutes: cigarette break.