15 Ella Mazel

Ella Mazel's "lifelong love affair with photography" started when she was a young child, using her father's Kodak camera.  An art major in college, she worked for a professional photographer after her junior year, making prints in his darkroom.  Later she had her own darkroom at home, where she processed the pictures she took of her four children.  Although she was never a professional photographer (her main profession was book design), she had pictures published in the New York Times and China Reconstructs magazine.  Her photos of the four Mazel children were used to illustrate a child-rearing book published by her husband, Bernie Mazel.  Many of her photos were taken during her extensive travels with Bernie, which included three trips to Cuba (in 1978, 1981, and 1985).  She wrote: "For me travel and photography are so closely interrelated that I would be hard put to say whether I take pictures because I travel or travel to take pictures. This is something that I think is impossible to explain to those who haven't experienced it themselves. The act of looking at everything in terms of pictures makes me see things in greater detail than does the casual observer."