NEW YORK—Mary Ellen Mark is one of the U.S.’s most respected and prolific photographers. She has exhibited widely, published 15 books of her work since 1974, won numerous awards, including the Cornell Capa Award from the International Center of Photography, and she was voted “Most Influential Woman Photographer” in a recent poll of American Photo readers.

A retrospective volume, Exposure, was published by Phaidon earlier this year, and a new version of her Falkland Road book of photographs of Bombay prostitutes, originally published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1981, is about to be published by Steidl. The Falkland Road prints are currently on view at Marianne Boesky and Yancey Richardson Galleries in New York.

It must be strange to return to a project that is more than 25-years old. How do you think the new version of Falkland Road compares with the 1981 Knopf version?

It’s interesting; it’s taken on a different significance now. I have to say that Gerhard Steidl is a genius. He did a fantastic job. It’s an incredibly well printed book, and he interpreted the work in his particular way, which I think made it look even better. The color looks almost surreal the way he printed it. The original book was very different. It was much more subdued.

Did the book include all of the same images?

I’ve added 11 more pictures. I could probably do a whole other book because I have boxes of material on this project that I want to go through and see what I’ve missed.

And how does the book relate to the shows?

It’s the first time that some of those prints have been made. Because, for the original show I had at Castelli Graphics in 1981, we only had 30 prints, and there are 76 in this show. They’re all in the book.

Tell me how you went about the project.

I had been to India many times before. I had been to Falkland Road years before, but I didn’t actually make my contact with the women until I did the pictures. The reason I picked this place is that—I’m sure it’s changed now—at that particular time, the street was governed by women, so I didn’t have to deal with pimps. If I’d had to deal with them, I think it would have been much harder to gain access.

Did you find it easy to have the women accept you?

It took a while. But I knew I had to do it, and, anyway, I’d had the strangest experience: Before I left for Bombay, I had a dream—one of those outrageous dreams—about what it was going to be like, and some of the things in the dream came true, and that gave me a certain confidence that I would be able to do it and be accepted. And I was. Some of the things in the dream came true.

They are certainly very powerful pictures. They make India look the heartbreaking place that people often say it is.

I don’t consider India a heartbreaking place. It’s a beautiful country. Every place has it’s own sense of heartbreak. America can be heartbreaking, too. When I did this work the idea wasn’t to show how Indian prostitutes live and work, it’s about prostitution in general. It’s about women who sell their bodies.

I found some of them quite harrowing.

Don’t you find it more harrowing looking at pictures of people severely injured from the war in Iraq? The women are survivors. A lot of them come from extreme poverty, and they’re sold into this work by their families and they survive. These are pictures about a way of life and about survival. I found the women very beautiful. For many of these women, this is a better life than they might have had otherwise. Because of the dowry system, it’s very difficult in India. Even if they are very poor, families have to give a dowry for the female children. Therefore, boys are more valued than girls. For many of these women, this is better than being destitute or on the street.

Certainly the exhibition has had an excellent response.

It’s had a very good response. People are moved by the subject and by the beauty of the prints. Because they’re shot in Chrome and printed in Cibachrome, people are blown over by the quality of the prints and how vibrant the color is. Some of this film doesn’t even exist any more.

Yes, you’re better known for your work in black and white, aren’t you?

I’m predominantly a black-and-white photographer, but I used color when I did these pictures. Color is very different from black and white. It’s another way of thinking and looking at things. All of these pictures were shot in 35mm. After I made the photographs on Falkland Road, I did a project on Mother Teresa in black and white. Some years later, I photographed Indian circuses also in black and white.

Today, I like working in all sorts of different formats; from 35mm to medium format to 4x5. My Twins project, for example, was shot with 20 x 24 Polaroid.

So what sorts of things are you working on now?

I have an idea for another personal project. I don’t want to talk about it because I don’t have the funding for it yet. But I would like to work again with the 20x24 Polaroid camera while it still exists.

I support myself by selling my prints, teaching and working as a portrait photographer for magazines. I have a contract with The New Yorker and they’ve given me some wonderful portraits to do. For example, this summer I photographed Billy Graham. He was fascinating. But portraiture is different from documentary work. Most magazines are interested in portraiture these days. I still go out on the street and shoot because my heart is with documentary work.