Susan Meiselas (born June 21, 1948) is an American documentary photographer. She has been associated with
Magnum Photos since 1976 and been a full member since 1980. Currently she is the President of the Magnum Foundation. She is best known for her 1970s photographs of war-torn Nicaragua and American carnival strippers.[1]
After earning her masters degree from
Harvard University, Meiselas was an assistant film editor on the
Frederick Wiseman documentary Basic Training. From 1972 to 1974, she worked for
New York City public schools, running workshops for teachers and children in the
Bronx and designing photography curricula for 4th–6th graders.[9] In the mid-1970s, Meiselas began working on a project she later titled the Prince Street Girls, a series that features young and adolescent girls from Little Italy in New York City.[10] She also worked for the State Arts Commissions of
South Carolina and
Mississippi setting up photography programs in rural schools and served as a consultant to
Polaroid and the Center for Understanding Media in New York City.[11]
Her first major photography project documented strippers at
New England fairs and carnivals, which she worked on during summers while teaching in the New York City public schools. The project resulted in an exhibition at the
Whitney Museum and a book, Carnival Strippers, that incorporated audio interviews with the subjects on a CD packaged with the book.[12]
In the late 1970s, Meiselas documented the
insurrection in Nicaragua and human rights issues in Latin America. Her most notable photograph from this project was Molotov Man, which depicts a man (later identified as Pablo 'Bareta' Aruaz) poised to throw a molotov cocktail made from a Pepsi bottle in his right hand, while holding a rifle in his left hand. It became a symbol of the
Sandinista revolution and was widely reproduced and remixed in Nicaragua. Latterly, outside this context, it was reproduced via an Internet meme based on
Joy Garnett's 2003 painting Molotov, thus becoming a prominent case-study of the appropriation, transformation, and quotation in art.[13][14] Her photographs of the Nicaraguan Revolution have been incorporated into local textbooks in Nicaragua. Her 1991 documentary film, Pictures from a Revolution, depicts her return to sites she photographed and conversations with subjects of the photographs as they reflect on the images ten years after the war.[15] In 2004, Meiselas returned to Nicaragua to install nineteen mural-size images of her photographs at the locations where they were taken. The project was called "Reframing History."[16]
Beginning in 1992, Meiselas used
MacArthur Foundation funding to curate a photographic history of
Kurdistan, resulting in the book Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History and a corresponding website, akaKurdistan.[17]
I don't want to relinquish the role and the necessity of witnessing and the photographic act as a response, a responsible response. But I also don't want to assume in a kind of naïve way … that the act of the making of the image is enough. What's enough? And what can we know in this process of making, publishing, reproducing, exposing, and recontextualizing work in book or exhibition form? … I can only hope that it registers a number of questions.[18]
Over several months in 2015 and 2016, Meiselas worked on a project about women in
refuges in the
Black Country area of the West Midlands, England.[1][19] The project was made in collaboration with Multistory, a local community arts charity, which published a book of the work, A Room of Their Own (2017).
Publications
Publications by Meiselas
Learn to See. USA: Polaroid Foundation, 1975. A collaboration with the
Polaroid Corporation.
Paris: Yellow Magic Books, 2013. Edition of 200 copies.
Oakland, CA: TBW Books, 2017. Subscription Series #5, Book #2.
ISBN978-1-942953-28-9. Edition of 1000 copies. Meiselas,
Mike Mandel, Bill Burke and
Lee Friedlander each had one book in a set of four.
A Room of Their Own. West Bromwich, England: Multistory, 2017.
On the Frontline. New York City: Aperture, 2017. Edited by Mark Holborn.
ISBN9781597114271.
Tar Beach: Life on the Rooftops of Little Italy. Bologna, Italy: Damiani, 2020.
ISBN9788862087223.
Eyes Open: 23 Photography Projects for Curious Kids. New York: Aperture, 2021.
ISBN9781597114691.
Publications edited by Meiselas
Chile From Within. Edited by Meiselas. USA: W.W. Norton, 1993. Photographs by Paz Errazuriz et al. ASIN B001F9BUBS. Texts by Ariel Dorfman and Marco Antonio de la Parra.
ISBN9780393306538.
Learn to See: A Sourcebook of Photography Projects by Students and Teachers. Edited by Susan Meiselas. Paris, France: delpire & co, 2021.
ISBN9791095821380.
Films
Living at Risk: The Story of a Nicaraguan Family (1986) – co-directed by Meiselas
Pictures from a Revolution (1991) – co-directed with
Alfred Guzzetti and Richard P. Rogers
Roses in December (1982)- features Meiselas’ stills of the churchwomen's gravesite.
Reviews
Wilkinson, Paul (1982), Why Nicaragua?, which includes a review of Nicaragua, June 1978 - July 1979, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 10, Autumn 1982, pp. 45 & 46,
ISSN0264-0856
Close Enough: New Perspectives from 12 Women Photographers of Magnum. September 29, 2022-January 9, 2023,
International Center of Photography, New York, New York[46]
Amanpour, Christiane (1999). Magna brava : Eve Arnold, Martine Franck, Susan Meiselas, Inge Morath, Marilyn Silverstone. Munich: Prestel. p. 240.
ISBN3791321609.
Golden, Reuel (2011). Photojournalism : 150 years of outstanding press photography ([New ed.] ed.). London: Carlton. p. 256.
ISBN9781847326362.