EMΣΤ is pleased to present a solo show of the work of renowned documentary photographer Susan Meiselas. A member of Magnum Photos since 1976 and current president of the Magnum Foundation, Meiselas has spent nearly five decades documenting global social and political issues. From war and human rights violations to cultural identity and the sex industry, Meiselas’ work raises provocative questions about documentary practice and the relationship between photographer and subject.
The presentation at EMΣΤ brings together two works: Archives of Abuse (1991–1992) and A Room of Their Own (2015–2017). Consisting of photographs, oral and written testimonies, collages, posters and videos these projects focus on domestic and family violence.
A Room of Their Own is a multi-layered, visual story that explores the lives of women who are survivors of domestic abuse in the Black Country, a post-industrial region in the UK. It was created through a collaborative, participatory process between Meiselas, transient women living in domestic violence shelters, local artists, writers, and Multistory, a non-profit arts organisation.
In her project, Archives of Abuse, Meiselas addresses the issue of domestic violence. In the early 1990s, the photographer was invited to support a public campaign in San Francisco to raise awareness about the subject. She began by photographing crime scenes, accompanying a team of specialised police investigators, and selecting a number of documents with photographs from the archives of the San Francisco Police Department. This research led her to create Archives of Abuse, a series of collages based on police reports and forensic photographs, which were posted in public spaces to raise people’s awareness of the many different forms of violence towards women as a structural phenomenon.
On the 13 June, from 6.30 to 8 pm, ΕΜΣΤ will host a conversation between Susan Meiselas and Eduardo Cadava, Professor of English at Princeton University.
Curated by Studio Susan Meiselas
Coordination: Stamatis Schizakis, Ioli Tzanetaki
BIOGRAPHY
Susan Meiselas is a world-renowned documentary photographer based in New York. She is the author of Carnival Strippers (1976), Nicaragua (1981), Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997), Pandora’s Box (2001), Encounters with the Dani (2003), Prince Street Girls (2016), A Room of Their Own (2017), Tar Beach (2020) and Carnival Strippers Revisited (2022). Meiselas is well known for her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America. Her photographs are included in North American and international collections. In 1992 she was made a MacArthur Fellow and received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015). Most recently, she received the first Women in Motion Award from Kering and the Rencontres d’Arles (2019), the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2019), and the Erich Salomon Award of the German Society for Photography (2022). Mediations, a survey exhibition of her work from the 1970s to present was initiated by Jeu de Paume, Paris, and travelled to Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo, along with other European venues. Meiselas has been the President of the Magnum Foundation since 2007, with a mission to expand diversity and creativity in documentary photography.
