Susan Meiselas

Susan Meiselas
Born 1948 and 70
Baltimore, MD
Occupation Photographer
Known for photos from 1970s insurrection in Nicaragua
Website www.susanmeiselas.com

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. She is best known for her 1970s photographs of two separate subjects: war-torn Nicaragua and American carnival strippers.[1]

Meiselas has published several books of her own photographs and has edited and contributed to others. Her works have been published in newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, The Times, Time, GEO and Paris Match. She received the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1979 and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1992. In 2006, she was awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship.[2]

After a relationship that spanned more than 30 years she married Richard P. Rogers shortly before his death in 2001.[3]

Education

Meiselas was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She attended junior high school in Woodmere, New York. She earned her BA at Sarah Lawrence College and an MA in visual education at Harvard University. She received Honorary Doctorates in Fine Arts from the Parsons School in 1986 and from The Art Institute of Boston in 1996.[4]

Career

After earning her degree from Harvard, Meiselas worked as 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 curriculum for 4th–6th graders. She also worked for the State Arts Commissions of South Carolina and Mississippi setting up photography programs in rural schools. She also worked as a consultant for Polaroid and the Center for Understanding Media in New York City.[5]

Her first major photography project documented strippers at New England fairs and carnivals, which she worked on during summers while teaching at the New York City public schools. The project resulted in an exhibition at the Whitney Museum and a book, Carnival Strippers, which incorporated audio interviews with the subjects on a CD packaged with the book.[6]

In the late 1970s Meiselas documented the insurrection in Nicaragua and human rights issues in Latin America. Her most noted photograph from this project was Molotov Man, depicting a man (later found to be called 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. This became noted in its Nicaraguan context as 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 reproduction Molotov, becoming a prominent case-study of re-use of art.[7][8] 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 10 years after the war.[9] In 2004, Meiselas returned to Nicaragua and installed 19 mural sized images of her photographs on the original locations where they were taken. The project was called "Reframing History."[10]

In 1981, she visited a village destroyed by the armed forces in El Salvador and took pictures of the El Mozote massacre, working with journalists Raymond Bonner and Alma Guillermoprieto.

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.

In a 2008 interview with Phong Bui in The Brooklyn Rail, Meiselas says:

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.[11]

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][12] The project was in collaboration with Multistory, a local community arts charity, who 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.
  • Carnival Strippers. USA: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976; Germany: Steidl, 2003. ISBN 978-3-88243-954-0.
  • Nicaragua, June 1978 – July 1979. USA: Pantheon, 1981, ISBN 978-0-906495-67-4. New York: Aperture, 2008, ISBN 978-1-59711-071-6.
  • El Salvador: The Work of Thirty Photographers. USA: Pantheon, 1983; Writers and Readers, 1983.
  • Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History. USA: Random House, 1997. USA: University of Chicago Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-226-51928-9.
  • Pandora's Box. Denmark: Magnum Editions/Trebruk, 2001. ISBN 978-0-9538901-1-8. On S&M in New York.
  • Encounters with the Dani. USA/Germany: International Center of Photography/Steidl, 2003. ISBN 978-3-88243-930-4.
  • In History: Susan Meiselas. Edited by Kristen Lubben. Text by Meiselas, Caroline Brothers, Edmundo Desnoes, Ariel Dorfman, Elizabeth Edwards and David Levi Strauss. USA/Germany: International Center of Photography/Steidl, 2008. ISBN 978-3-86521-685-4. Published in conjunction with an exhibition.
  • Prince Street Girls.
    • Paris: Yellow Magic Books, 2013. Edition of 200 copies.
    • Oakland, CA: TBW Books, 2017. Subscription Series #5, Book #2. ISBN 978-1-942953-28-9. 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. ISBN 9781597114271

Publication 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.

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

Awards

Collections

Meiselas' work is held in the following permanent collections:

Exhibitions

References

  1. 1 2 "Photographer Susan Meiselas on documenting women’s refuges". Rachel Cooke, The Observer, 21 My 2017. Accessed 24 May 2017
  2. 1 2 "Error".
  3. ↑ Lambert, Craig. "The Windmill Movie: Two filmmakers collaborate across the gulf between life and death". Harvard Magazine.
  4. ↑ Hudson, Berkley (2009). Sterling, Christopher H., ed. Encyclopedia of Journalism. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE. pp. 1060–67. ISBN 978-0-7619-2957-4.
  5. ↑ Maryland art source
  6. 1 2 "Susan Meiselas". The Museum of Modern Art.
  7. ↑ Stephen Marvin, 'Copyright Innovation in Art', International Journal of Conservation Science, 4 (2013), 729-734 (pp. 731--72).
  8. ↑ Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas, 'On the Rights of Molotov Man: Appropriation and the Art of Context', Harper's Magazine (February 2007), 53-58 (pp. 56-57), http://www.firstpulseprojects.com/On-the-Rights-of-Molotov-Man.pdf.
  9. ↑ "Pictures from a Revolution (1991)". IMDb. 5 October 1991.
  10. ↑ "''Reframing History'' web gallery". Susanmeiselas.com. Archived from the original on 2014-08-27. Retrieved 2014-08-26.
  11. ↑ Bui, Phong (November 2008). "In Conversation: Susan Meiselas with Phong Bui". The Brooklyn Rail.
  12. ↑ "Stories: A Room of Their Own: Susan Meiselas". Multistory. Accessed 24 May 2017
  13. ↑ "Artist: Susan Meiselas". International Center For Photography.
  14. ↑ "Susan Meiselas". Hemispheric Institute.
  15. ↑ "Susan Meiselas". New York University Tech.
  16. ↑ "Susan Meiselas". MacArthur Foundation.
  17. ↑ "Past Maria Moors Cabot Prizes Winners:" (PDF). Columbia University. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
  18. ↑ "ICP New York honours Peter Magubane". Art South Africa. Archived from the original on 2016-09-16.
  19. ↑ "Susan Meiselas", Hasselblad Foundation. Accessed 5 January 2015.
  20. ↑ "2005 Infinity Award: Cornell Capa Award". International Center of Photography, 4 April 2005. Accessed 24 May 2017
  21. ↑ "Susan Meiselas Named Harvard Arts Medalist". Harvard Magazine, 22 December 2010. Accessed 24 May 2017
  22. ↑ "Susan Meiselas". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 24 May 2017.
  23. ↑ https://artsbma.org/artist/susan-meiselas-united-states-born-1948/
  24. ↑ https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/person/34886?person=34886
  25. ↑ https://eastman.org/eastman-house-acquire-important-photographs-rochester-10-magnum-photographers
  26. ↑ https://thejewishmuseum.org/collection/artist/susan-meiselas-american-b-1948
  27. ↑ https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/womphotoj/meiselasessay.html
  28. ↑ http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/press/releases/2010/magnum.html
  29. ↑ http://www.mocp.org/detail.php?type=related&kv=17431&t=objects
  30. ↑ https://www.mfah.org/art/detail/82693?returnUrl=%2Fart%2Fsearch%3Fartist%3DSusan%2BMeiselas
  31. ↑ "Susan Meiselas". Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Retrieved 6 March 2018.
  32. ↑ https://www.sfmoma.org/artist/Susan_Meiselas
  33. ↑ http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/artist/Meiselas%2C+Susan
  34. ↑ http://collection.whitney.org/artist/5420/SusanMeiselas
  35. ↑ "October 11, 2017 – January 14, 2018", Fundació Antoni Tàpies. Accessed 24 November 2017
  36. ↑ "Susan Meiselas: Mediations: from 06 February 2018 until 20 May 2018: Concorde, Paris". Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume. Accessed 6 March 2018.
  37. ↑ Cat Lachowskyj, "Huge Susan Meiselas retrospective goes on show in Paris on 06 February". British Journal of Photography, 17 January 2018. Accessed 6 March 2018.
  38. ↑ "Susan Meiselas: from the dressing room to the danger zone - in pictures". The Guardian. London. 7 February 2018. Retrieved 6 March 2018.

Further reading

  • Amanpour, Christiane (1999). Magna brava : Eve Arnold, Martine Franck, Susan Meiselas, Inge Morath, Marilyn Silverstone. Munich: Prestel. p. 240. ISBN 3791321609.
  • Golden, Reuel (2011). Photojournalism : 150 years of outstanding press photography ([New ed.] ed.). London: Carlton. p. 256. ISBN 9781847326362.
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