Mark Mahaney (born 1979, Chicago) is an American photographer living and working between California and New York. Commercially, Mahaney’s clients range from Nike, Levi’s and IBM to The New Yorker, M Le Monde and Time Magazine. Mahaney enjoyed his education at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA, USA. Mark Mahaney exhibited at Kominek Gallery, Berlin, DE, Paris Photo, Paris, FR and SF Camerawork, San Francisco, USA.
Mark Mahaney’s photographs are based upon a roughness that fails to give a true impression of his vision when viewed individually. Mahaney believes it is impossible to define a story through a single picture. Therefore, he puts focus on lucid details, constructing polished and coherent images that rely on each other to construct meaning and feeling. Exactly this is what makes his images stand out from others, as the details are so lucid it almost feels like you can experience them when looking at the photographs.
Mahaney is fascinated by transformation, for example, the transformation of rural villages where the way of living has drastically changed overtime. Towns such as the one that Mahaney himself grew up in, places that have lost track of the once recognisable characteristics that defined the people living there. But, the dreams and objectives that formed the villages are still present in everything and everyone that remains. It is the same truthfulness that he uses with his portraits and commercial work. The sense of what is relevant and what is not, the struggle between what should be in or left out an image, it all comes down on the intrinsic democratic vision Mahaney has. He is eager to show the personal environment as en expression of the individual’s inner life.
When viewing Mark Mahaney’s work, it is essential to acknowledge that what is left out of the frame is just as important as what is shown. It is vital to see the photographs as a construction of significant elements that are collected to create a compelling narrative. The characteristics in Mahaney’s photography reflect on the things he values himself and on that what constructs his own idea of what the world should look like.