Born in 1948 in Baltimore, Maryland. Susan Meiselas's early years are poorly documented, but she is probably best known for documenting the Nicaraguan uprising and human rights issues in Latin America in the 1970s. But after going through her website, I found that this female photographer is uniquely gentle and meticulous. In the face of war, her attitude can be regarded as calm, but she has more ideas on the narrative of the picture, a variety of means of expression, and jumps out of the shutter thinking. And most of the projects have a return visit many years later, she will bring the photos taken that year to do a super large display, the body that once existed in the shade of the green, the picture of the crying boy in front of the burning house directly to the original place for exhibition. When photographing the Kurds during the Gulf War, they simply abandoned the way to find stories and turned to the archives that recorded this race.
While pursuing a master's degree at Harvard, I took a photography course for the first time. Finally, in order to hand over her homework, she took a 4x5 portrait of each neighbor in the apartment, took a picture of these people's usual postures at home, and then wrote them with a pen and paper about how to see themselves in the photos, so the photos became stories and no longer just separate photos.
44 irving st
At the age of 25, Susan Meiselas, who taught at a New York public school, went to a small town in New England, Pennsylvania, over the summer to interview and shoot strippers, followed them to the cave, photographed them on stage, in private, and recorded interviews with the dancers, their boyfriends, performance managers, and paying customers.
usa. essex junction, vermont. 1973. lena on the bally box.
usa. woodstock, vermont
usa. essex junction, vermont. susan photographing ginger
usa. barton, vermont. 1974. lena
carnival strippers, new england, 1972-1975
Most of these women are between the ages of 17 and 35, and most of them have no place to live, and they spend 3-5 days performing in each place. A truck unfolds onto two stages, one for the public to party and the other for a private audience hidden under a tent, with the dressing rooms acting as partitions in the middle. Over and over again, from morning to night, they attracted crowds in front of the stage, and the music was always the record with 45 pop songs. All male audiences usually include farmers, bankers, fathers and sons, and no women and children. The level of openness of on-stage performances and off-stage services varies according to local laws and tolerance.
after school on the corner of prince and mott streets, 1976
One year she was riding a bicycle down the street, and a flash of light crossed her eyes, and a group of children stood in front of the mirror fiddling, reflecting the sunlight on her face. So she met the girls on Prince Street, from a combined Italian and American family. Susan Meiselas became their secret friend. In 1978, as if everything was changing, she wanted to document their upbringing, but the work brought her into war and went back to filming ten years later, and the girls had grown up, with chic cafes and luxury stores on the streets that were no longer the same.
pebbles, jojo and carol on the a train, 1978
rosean on a train, 1978
prince street girl, new york, 1976-2011
One morning, near her home, she crossed the street with a Santa Claus and wondered who he was? Where did it come from? Why is it in the neighborhood? Then she discovered "volunteers of america," a volunteer organization on Fifth Avenue, made up of homeless people dressed as Santa Claus collecting some money in the neighborhood, like a fairly reasonable presence, someone passing by to see, someone giving money, some kids climbing on their knees, but no one caring where they came from. After Christmas, they turned back into homeless drunkards and lay flat on the street. She finally found the answer, and these people were sent to addiction clinics one after another.
volunteers of america, new york city, 1976-1978
She even went on a hunting trip to photograph the "Pandora's Box" club, where hostess Raven rules a 4,000-square-foot Manhattan senior S&M club that bills itself as the "disneyland of domination."
pandora’s box, new york city
Alternately recorded are the lingering war records, but what is more amazing is that she has not been stripped of the soft part by the cruelty of war, which shows the tenacity of her character.
In 1973, in a Chilean coup d'état, after the murder of Chilean President Salvador Allende, he was succeeded by General Pinochet and put into dictatorship until 1990.
Water cannons disperse crowds celebrating the victory of the "No" movement to overthrow the Augusto Pinochet regime, 1988
Police questioned passers-by in downtown San Diego, 1988
Selected photographs with other photographers, 1988
By the time nirangua came, her narrative was already a bit out of the way. "Nicaragua gives me the impression that everyone is waiting for something. For six weeks, I felt like the pictures I was taking didn't show what was going on there, but what people were feeling. ”
Infantry Training School (EEBI), National Guard, Managua, 1978
Recruits recorded portraits of Anastasio Somoza debayle, 1978
marketplace, diriamba
the new york times magazine, july 30, 1978.youths practice throwing contact bombs in forest surrounding monimbo.
Residential Streets, august 1978
muchachos await the counterattack by the national guard. matagalpa
geo. monimbo, 1979. The woman was ready to put the dead and bury her husband in the backyard.
Her most famous masterpiece is molotov man. Depicts a man with his right hand preparing to throw a Pepsi bottle-modified alcohol incendiary bomb and a rifle in his left hand. This became the famous symbol of the Sandanista Revolution, an image that was repeatedly used by artists everywhere.
In 1981, she visited villages destroyed by Salvadoran troops and photographed massacres, working with journalists Raymond Bonner and alma guillermoprieto. Her photographs of the Nicaragua Revolution were incorporated into local textbooks. Documentaries about her, Pictures from a Revolution, depict her revisit after 10 years. In 2004, she returned to Nicaragua and installed 19 mural-sized photographs, a project named "Reconstructing History".
One of the projects that followed was to document the Dani people filmed in West Papua with filmmakers.
Dani Tribe, 1989. The clan member Aloro greeted filmmaker Robert Gardner and made a traditional gesture of intimacy and trust to him.
Susan Meiselas completely surrendered the initiative of the camera in his hand in the filming project Kurdistan: In the shadow of history. When the Gulf War began, she, like most Americans, didn't know what Kurds were. Having long occupied special areas in the world, the Kurds have never achieved nation-state status and are in dire need of humanitarian assistance, and Iran has granted her visa to visit Kurdish refugee camps. The Kurds say they have read some western accounts of them, and that these dusty books and prints are scarce. In Western archives, "Kurdistan" is also rarely indexed. The photographs they display are seen as descriptive or aesthetic objects of the nation, and almost no one has sorted and classified them, and these images can still serve as evidence of this racial encounter.
Susan Meiselas identity is switched between creator and collector. In Kurdistan she concentrated on copying family photos, and the men trusted her so much that they handed over the originals to make copies for her, invited her to the house to listen to stories, and ate for the night. Letting the record simply return to the record itself, as a photographer almost weakens its own existence to the greatest extent.
Freedom Fighter Martyrs' Photograph on Family Members' Clothes, Saiwan Hill Cemetery, Northern Iraq, 1991
Assistant laura hubber deals with positive/negative Polaroid film, Sulaymaniyah, Northern Iraq, 1993
Assistant laura hubber and translator as'ad gozeh handle Polaroid Film, Sulaymaniyah, Northern Iraq, 1993
Susan Meiselas Selecting and Processing Photographs, Sulaymaniyah, Northern Iraq, 1993
She deliberately listed the story categories on her personal website, and used pictures to tell a relatively complete story. It is only in these stories that you will feel that the initiative to press the shutter is firmly held by her. Here are three for the time being.
The Story of the Filipino Bride:
girls education, mali, 2007
Hadiaratou guinto, 11 years old, collects tamarind leaves to cook.
blind school, Ivory Coast, 2010
Roxal, 10 years old, is a student at home at inipa school.
He was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1979, the MacArthur Award in 1992 and the Centennial Medal of the Royal Photographic Society in 2006. She had a relationship with her lover for 30 years, and her husband died in 2001 shortly after the marriage.
Recently there was a photo exhibition on "consequences of fossil fuels use" in Xuhui, Shanghai, with some works by her and other photographers, in the T1 basement exhibition hall of Xuhui Vanke Center. It is a pity that there is no reproduction of the magnificent scene where she once hung a photo next to the sheets on the balcony of the block, nor did she have a richer and more diverse display.
(Art New Youth WeChat public account: yishuxinqingnian)