Susan Meiselas

Biography

Susan Meiselas is a documentary photographer and member of Magnum Photos since 1976. She is the author of Carnival Strippers, Nicaragua: June 1978-July 1979, Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, Pandora’s Box and Encounters with the Dani. She has co-edited two collections: El Salvador: Work of 30 Photographers and Chile from Within. Meiselas has also co-directed three films: Living at Risk and Pictures from a Revolution with Richard P. Rogers and Alfred Guzzetti and Reframing History where she returned again to Nicaragua and placed her photographs of the popular insurrection in the landscape where they were first taken. Her pioneering website created in 1998, akaKURDISTAN, is considered a seminal model for diaspora participation in collective memory and cultural exchange.

Meiselas is well known for her multi-decade documentation of human rights issues in Latin America. Her photographs are included in American and international collections. In 1992 Meiselas was made a MacArthur Fellow and in 2015 received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007, she became the founding President of the Magnum Foundation. The Magnum Foundation supports, trains, and mentors the next generation of in-depth independent documentary photographers and seeks to increase the impact of both historical and contemporary photography in the digital age.

Meiselas is presently on the Advisory Board of the Acumen Fund and the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics at The New School.