Susan Meiselas
born 1948, Susan Meiselas lives and works in New York. Meiselas
received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.A. in visual
education from Harvard University. Her first major photographic essay
focused on the lives of women doing striptease at New England country
fairs. CARNIVAL STRIPPERS was subsequently published by Farrar, Straus
& Giroux in 1976. Meiselas joined Magnum Photos in 1976 and has
worked as a freelance photographer since then. She is best known for
her coverage of the insurrection in Nicaragua and her documentation of
human rights issues in Latin America. In 1981, Pantheon published her
second monograph, NICARAGUA, JUNE 1978-JULY 1979. In 1997, she
completed a six year project, curating a 100 year photographic history
of Kurdistan, and integrating her own work into the book entitled
KURDISTAN: IN THE SHADOW OF HISTORY. Meiselas then created the website,
www.akaKURDISTAN.com, an online archive of collective memory. Recent
monographs include PANDORA’S BOX and ENCOUNTERS WITH THE DANI. Meiselas
has had one-woman exhibitions in Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Los
Angeles, Chicago and New York. Her work is included in many
collections. She has received the Robert Capa Gold Medal, the Leica
Award for Excellence (1982), the Hasselblad Foundation Photography
prize (1994) and the Cornell Capa Infinity Award (2005).
