Originally published in 1981, and now in a third edition, Susan Meiselas's Nicaragua is a contemporary classic--a seminal contribution to the literature of concerned photography.
Nicaragua: June 1978-July 1979 forms an extraordinary narrative of a nation in turmoil. Starting with a powerful and chilling evocation of the Somoza regime during its decline in the late 1970s, the images trace the evolution of the popular resistance that led to the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in 1979. The book includes interviews with various participants in the revolution, along with letters, poems, and statistics.
In the decades following the original publication, Meiselas has continued to contextualize her photographs and relate them to history as it unfolded. Multiple editions build upon this body of work to evoke and conjure up the reality of people's lives and aspirations, their victories and disappointments. In this new edition, thirty images are linked via QR codes to excerpts from the films Pictures from a Revolution (1991, codirected with Richard P. Rogers and Alfred Guzzetti) in which Meiselas tracks down and interviews the people she photographed, and Reframing History (2004, codirected with Alfred Guzzetti), her collaboration with local communities in installing mural-sized images in the places where they were originally taken, eliciting the memories and reflections of those passing by. By extending and deepening her work, Meiselas asks us to consider not only the specific timeframe of this book, but to think about the broader perspective of history unfolding, and how in the passage of time a photograph of a single moment in a person's life shifts its meanings as well as our perception of it. An interview with the artist by Magnum Foundation's director, Kristen Lubben, addresses how the work of this evolving project has been circulated, revisited, and repatriated--and how and why it endures.
For me, the essence of documentary photography has always been to do with evidence. --Susan Meiselas
A member of Magnum Photos since 1976, Susan Meiselas became known for her work in the conflict zones of Central America in the 1970s and '80s and for the strength of her color photography. Covering many subjects and countries, from war to human-rights issues and from cultural identity to the sex industry, Meiselas uses photography, film, video and sometimes archive material, as she relentlessly explores and develops narratives integrating the participation of her subjects in her works. Meiselas constantly questions the photographic process and her role as witness.
Presenting a selection of works from the 1970s through the present day, Susan Meiselas: Mediations retraces her trajectory from the 1970s to the present. Published to accompany a major traveling retrospective of the photographer's work, it features an illustrious list of contributors that includes Ariella Azoulay, Eduardo Cadava and Kristin Lubben, among others.
Susan Meiselas (born 1948) studied at Sarah Lawrence College and Harvard University, taking up photography in the early 1970s. She is credited with being one of the first to work with color in documentary photography, a controversial decision when she was shooting the conflict in Nicaragua in the late 1970s. Meiselas joined Magnum Photos in 1976 and has worked as a freelance photographer since then.
A new and expanded edition of Meiselas' 1976 classic, perhaps one of the most important photobooks of the postwar era
From 1972 to 1975, Susan Meiselas spent her summers photographing women who performed striptease for small-town carnivals in New England, Pennsylvania and South Carolina. As she followed the shows from town to town, she captured the dancers on stage and off, their public performances as well as their private lives, creating a portrait both documentary and empathetic: The recognition of this world is not the invention of it. I wanted to present an account of the girl show that portrayed what I saw and revealed how the people involved felt about what they were doing. Meiselas also taped candid interviews with the dancers, their boyfriends, the show managers and paying customers, which form a crucial part of the book.
Meiselas' frank description of these women brought a hidden world to public attention, and explored the complex role the carnival played in their lives: mobility, money and liberation, but also undeniable objectification and exploitation. Produced during the early years of the women's movement, Carnival Strippers reflects the struggle for identity and self-esteem that characterized a complex era of change.
Carnival Strippers Revisited and Making Of come together in a slipcase. Making Of includes color images from Carnival Strippers that have never been printed and/or published before, along with ephemera material collected by Meiselas at the time she developed the project.
Born in Maryland in 1938, Susan Meiselas has worked as a freelance documentary photographer since joining Magnum Photos in 1976. Her images, particularly those covering the hostilities in Central America during the insurrection, have been widely published and exhibited. Meiselas' many books include Carnival Strippers (1976), Nicaragua (1981), Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997), a project on the 100-year photographic history of Kurdistan, Pandora's Box (2001), exploring a New York S&M club, and Tar Beach (2020).
Found family photographs from New York's Little Italy portray a vanished way of life
A Chicago Tribune 2020 holiday gift guide pick
In Tar Beach, photographer and Little Italy resident Susan Meiselas (born 1948) brings together found pictures that were made, kept and gathered by various families who handed them down from 1940 to the early 1970s. Reflections from the community offer perspectives of multiple generations, as local author Angel Marinaccio says: If you had an accomplishment--communion, confirmation, wedding, graduation or birthday, you'd dress up in your best outfit and go to the rooftop to take pictures and celebrate with your family. The introduction to Tar Beach is written by renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who grew up on the streets portrayed in this collection. He writes: The roof was our escape hatch and it was our sanctuary. The endless crowds, the filth and the grime, the constant noise, the chaos, the claustrophobia, the non-stop motion of everything ... you would walk up that flight of stairs, open the door, and you were above it all. You could breathe. You could dream. You could be. Meiselas, along with two of her neighbors, Angel Marinaccio and Virginia Bynum, collected and curated these vernacular photographs and memories to convey the feeling of this special place and time in the daily lives of Italian immigrants as they made their way to becoming part of American culture.