Susan Meiselas

(b Baltimore, MD, 21 June 1948). American photographer. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, graduated from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, in 1971 and taught in public schools until she joined the photographic agency Magnum in 1976 on the strength of a black-and-white photographic essay on Carnival Strippers. A self-taught photojournalist, Meiselas did most of her photography in troubled locations or among developing nations. She went to Chad and Cuba before travelling to Nicaragua in 1978; she was there when the Sandinista revolution erupted and later published her chronicle of the uprising in uncompromising colour photographs in Nicaragua (1981). She subsequently continued to work as a photojournalist.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Meiselas, Susan (b. 1948), American photojournalist and documentary photographer. After gaining an MA in Education at Harvard she worked as photography adviser for the Community Resources Institute of the New York schools system, running workshops while also photographing freelance. Her first success came with Carnival Strippers (1976), a feminist take on a particular kind of women's business. (Her documentary interest in the sex industry has continued throughout her career.) She joined Magnum in 1976, becoming a full member in 1980. Her overseas pictures first struck home with coverage of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in 1978: harrowing colour images of the outgoing dictator Somoza's atrocities against civilians, with children dying before the camera. From then on, Meiselas was committed to frequent returns to Central America, where she documented the human rights struggles of the 1980s and 1990s. But a six-year project on the Kurds produced a major exhibition and book, Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997). She has received many awards, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal (1979).

— Amanda Hopkinson

Bibliography

• Magna Brava: Magnum's Women Photographers (1999)

Susan Meiselas (born 1948) is an American photographer. Meiselas was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She attended junior high school in Woodmere, N.Y. After taking a BA at Sarah Lawrence College and an MA at Harvard University, she joined Magnum Photos co-operative in 1976 and has worked as a freelance photographer since then. In 1981, she visited a village destroyed by the armed forces in San Salvador and took pictures of the El Mozote massacre. Meiselas has published several books of her photographs.

Awards

• Hasselblad Award (1994)
• MacArthur Fellowship (1992)
• Robert Capa Gold Medal (1978)

External links

• Her website
• Magnum Photos
• aka Kurdistan
• Photos from Kurdistan

This article about an American photographer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)