AMERICAN DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER. Susan Meiselas.

EARLY LIFE. Born 1948, Baltimore, Maryland. Earned a BA at Sarah Lawrence College and a MA in visual education at Harvard University. Received a Honorary Doctorates in Fine Arts from Parsons School in 1986 and from The Art Institute of Boston in 1996.

CAREER. After earning her degrees from 1972 – 1974 she worked for New York public schools running workshops for teachers and children. She also worked for the State Arts Commissions of South Carolina and Mississippi setting up photography programs for rural schools Her first major photography project was of strippers at New England’s fair and carnivals. This resulted in an exhibition at the Whitney museum and a book – Carnival - Strippers.

In the late 1970s Meiselas also documented the insurrection in Nicaragua and human rights issues in Latin America. Her most famous photograph from this project was Molotov Man. Nicaragua, “Molotov Man’

n 1981, she visited a village destroyed by the armed forces in El Salvador and took pictures of the El Mozote massacre, working with journalists Raymonf Booner and Alma Guillermoprieto. Her 1991 documentary "Pictures from a Revolution" depicts her return to sites she photographed and conversations with subjects of the photographs as they reflect on the images 10 years after the war. Beginning in 1992, she used MacArthur Foundation funding to curate a photographic history of Kurdistan, resulting in the book Kurdistan: In the Shawdow of History and a corresponding website.

More information. Her Website, with more details and photos: