Mark Morrisroe was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1959 and was a photographer.
His mother was a drug-addicted prostitute. He left home at the age of 13 and began hustling. One of his disgruntled contacts shot him and he carried a bullet in his chest for the rest of his life.
He won a place at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, but he was disruptive as his lifestyle involved drugs, cross-dressing, and exhibitionism.
Many of his photographs were self-portraits and formed a visual diary of his life. He photographed himself, friends and lovers in dark, grainy, distressed colour, integrating Super 8 stills and black and white Polaroids. His work is 'decadent' and his subject matter inseparable from his life. His work is technically experimental and takes on a sketchbook quality which includes titles and comments scrawled on the edges of his images.Morrisroe used a 195 Polaroid Land camera and a film donated by the Polaroid company.
He assumed various identities including Mark Dirt, fanzine editor, and Sweet Raspberry, a maudlin drag queen down on her luck.In 1997 an exhibition of Morrisoe's work My Life. Mark Morrisroe: Polaroids 1977-1989 was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. The exhibition included 188 portraits. Captured over a twelve-year period, Morrisroe's naked body in these photographs depicts the changes to his body cased by HIV infection as he transforms from youthful beauty to near-skeletal wasting. The photographs carry great self-awareness and poignancy.
Towards the end of his life he spent so much time in hospital he set up a dark room in the ward shower.When he died 2000 Polaroids were found along with Super-8 films.
The estate of Mark Morrisroe (Collection Ringier) is currently located at the Fotomuseum Winterthur