Susan Meiselas: Mediations

Description

This exhaustive monograph of Susan Meiselas will be released in occasion of the retrospective that will take place at Tapies Foundation in Barcelone, Jeu de Paume in Paris and SFMOMA in San Francisco. Mediations is published by Damiani/Jeu de Paume/Fondation Tapies. This exhibition and monograph propose a selection of works from the 1970s to today which reveal the particular approach of Susan Meiselas toward to the underlying reasons for making photographs, how the image concerns it's subject as much as the photographer and the role that these images can have at different levels in society and particularly in photojournalism. She questions the relationship between the image and the subject in such a way as to include the people portrayed in the image in the process of the making. There is nothing systematic in her approach: each work expresses in a very strong manner that context is vital to the understanding of photography. Therefore her work is specific to the persons portrayed, to the notion of community to which they belong and to the locality of the geographic and political territories that the artist addresses. The way of the showing the work is equally a part of the thought process. How does the spectator behold the artwork? It is often comprised of many parts, made in different media: each "layer" is used to document a level of meaning. For Meiselas one should be able to grasp why the image was taken. Both the subject of the image and the context in which the images are shown are taken into account in the elaboration of each project.

Susan Meiselas is an award-winning documentary photographer, whose work has been published in numerous books and exhibited internationally in galleries including the Fundacio Antoni Tapies in Barcelona and Jeu de Paume in Paris.

a meditation on the threads that weave the complex tapestry of Meiselas' career.--Sara Rosen "Huck" if you can't make it to see her genre-defining photographs in person, pick up the book and look behind the scenes of one of America's photographic living legends."--Morgan Sykes "New York Magazine" Exceptional, giving a taste of the breadth of her work.--Mark Murrmann "Mother Jones" Mediations brings together a selection of series from the 1970s to the present, calling attention to Meiselas's photographic approach and her lifelong commitment to engage in a "cycle of return" with her subjects, going back to the communities she has photographed and sharing the work with them.-- "PDN's Notable Photo Books of 2018" Mediations shows the range of Meiselas's subjects, from carnival strippers, girls in her Little Italy neighborhood in New York (the "Prince Street Girls"), a refuge for women in England, and the aftermath of the Kurdistan genocide in 1991.--Emily Wilson "Hyperallergic" Meiselas remains an inspiration for any self-conscious photographer. At the centre of her work is a perpetual discussion around the purpose and relevance of photography, the use and distribution of images and their effects on history and memory.--Clara Hernanz "Dazed" Using photography, film, video, and archive material, Meiselas presents a comprehensive narrative of the subjects in her work, constantly raising questions about the role of the photographer as a witness and the subject as a participant.-- "Juxtapoz"