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    • Daniel E. Greene
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    • Mandy Hallenius
    • Philippe Halsman
    • Gordon Hanley
    • David Hardy
    • Price Harrison
    • George Hartley
    • Christine Hartman
    • Erich Hartmann
    • David Alan Harvey
    • Seth Haverkamp
    • Jeff Hein
    • Tim Hetherington
    • Ron Hicks
    • Greg Hildebrandt
    • Thomas Hoepker
    • ​Sohrab Hura
    • David Hurn
    • Maureen Hyde
    • Jason Patrick Jenkins
    • Richard Kalvar
    • Svetlana Kanyo​
    • Thomas Kegler
    • Michael Vince Kim
    • Michael Klein
    • Josef Koudelka
    • Wang Kun
    • Alain Laboile
    • Sarah Lamb
    • Joshua LaRock
    • Bryan Larsen
    • Urban Larsson
    • Herman Leonard
    • Robert Liberace​
    • He Lihuai
    • Edward Little
    • Jeremy Lipking
    • Vivian Maier
    • Sally Mann
    • Constantine Manos
    • Diana Markosian
    • Steve McCurry
    • Sydney McGinley
    • Sherrie McGraw
    • Susan Meiselas
    • Terje Adler Mork
    • Karen Offutt
    • Graydon Parrish
    • Christopher Parrott
    • Leszek Piotrowski
    • Denise Pollack
    • Aleksi Poutanen
    • Christopher Pugliese
    • Julio Reyes
    • Lissa Rivera
    • Cristina García Rodero
    • Sergio Roffo
    • Cesar Santos
    • David Saxe
    • Nelson Shanks
    • Jordan Sokol
    • Viktoria Sorochinski
    • Paweł Starzec
    • Victoria Steel
    • Gwendolyn Stine
    • Dennis Stock
    • Vicki Sullivan
    • Carol Lee Thompson
    • Dan Thompson
    • Larry Towell
    • Hsin-Yao Tseng
    • Boris Vallejo
    • James Van Fossan
    • Jeffrey R. Watts
    • ​Patricia Watwood
    • Alex Webb
    • Morgan Weistling
    • Shane Wolf
    • Anna Wypych
    • ​Robert Zeller
    • Kailin Zhao
    • Doug Zider
  • Books
    • Colour Control
    • Dynamic Symmetry in Composition
    • Dynamic Symmetry - The Greek Vase
    • Perspective Made Easy
    • Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures
    • The Art of Composition: A Simple Application of Dynamic Symmetry
    • The Art of Composition: A Simple Application of Dynamic Symmetry (1956)
    • The Classic Point of View
    • The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry
    • Treatise in Landscape Painting
  • Articles & Videos
    • 3 Bad Habits All Photographers Should Break (Video)
    • 3 Reasons Why Most Photography Workshops Aren't Worth the Money
    • 5 Approaches to Composition in Photography (And Why They Won't Teach You Anything About Design)
    • 5 Myths About Composition (Video)
    • 14 Line Armature (Video)
    • An Email Addressing the Practical Use of Dynamic Symmetry in Art
    • A New, Old Way to Teach Art
    • Armature of the Rectangle (Video)
    • Art Can't Be Taught?
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    • Breaking Down a Dynamic Symmetry Rectangle (Video)
    • Classical Realism- Part 1, 2, and 3
    • Classical Drawing Atelier - Introduction
    • Classical Painting Atelier - Introduction
    • Compositional Studies
    • Creating a Portfolio: Advice from Magnum
    • Drawing Is Back in Fashion
    • Drawing Is the Heart by Juliette Aristides
    • Dynamic Symmetry and Wildlife
    • Dynamic Symmetry for Photographers
    • Dynamic Symmetry, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Myron Barnstone​
    • Dynamic Symmetry in Fine Art Sculpture
    • Film vs. Digital
    • Gamut in Composition (Video)
    • Geometry of Design - Introduction
    • Greatest Area of Contrast (Video)
    • History Painting and the Problem with Art Education
    • How Skilled Copyists Leave the Louvre with a Masterpiece Every Year
    • How the Arts Develop the Young Brain
    • If Anything's Art, Art's Nothing
    • If Everything Is Art, Then Nothing Is Art
    • Isn't There Something Incomprehensible, Magical, or Mystical About Art?
    • Is Photography Art?
    • Juliette Aristides on Composition: From the Book "Classical Drawing Atelier
    • Juliette Aristides: On Myron Barnstone
    • Juliette Aristides On TRAC With the Atelier Movement
    • Keep Your Composure
    • Kenyon Cox on Modern Art and Composition
    • Lessons in Classical Drawing - Introduction
    • Lessons in Classical Painting - Introduction
    • Magnum Photographers from Different Generations ​Talk About the Fabled Agency’s Past, Present, and Future
    • Mastering Classical Realism​ With Juliette Aristides
    • Myron Barnstone: A Life's Work
    • Myron Barnstone: An art career in perspective
    • Nick Alm: Derived From Empathy
    • One Question with Juliette Aristides
    • Pictorial Composition: An Introduction
    • Practice Doesn't Always Guarantee Success
    • Priceless Advice: A Personal Email From Myron Barnstone
    • The Art of Seeing and Visual Literacy
    • The Art of Selection
    • The Atelier Approach to Art Education
    • The Armature of the Rectangle
    • ​The Consequences of Taking a Stand
    • The Da Vinci Initiative
    • The Difference Between a Fine Art Print and a Work of Art
    • The Failure of Art Education in America
    • The Gap Between Photography and Art
    • The Number One Reason Why a Work of Art Will Fail
    • The Painter's Secret Geometry - Introduction
    • The Pendulum Has Swung With a Vengeance
    • The Place of Photography in Fine Art
    • The Road to Visual Literacy
    • What Are the Benefits of Atelier Trainin​g?
  • Art Highlights

Work Ethic: The Principles That Have Shaped a Photographic Practice by Susan Meiselas

1/18/2018

 
Susan Meiselas and Dynamic Symmetry Photography
In photojournalism, the frontline tends to mean one thing—the area on the edge of some immediate, dangerous action, usually a battleground of some degree, but for Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas, the term refers to something more abstract. For Meiselas, the frontline does not only represent a “geographical space” but, she says “a documentary photographer can cross the line and show that the conflict zone is not just a battleground in a distant land; it is also in our homes, it is self-inflicted, it’s in our heads.”

The American photographer, who joined Magnum in 1976, has spent a prolific career creating work that delves deep into the lives of others, indeed sometimes in battle zones, but often in quieter settings, where her subjects become collaborative forces in making work that represents far more than the resulting series of photographs.

For Meiselas, the photograph forms only part of a larger project of documenting and forging connection and understanding. “The photographs are immediate personal encounters that last only a moment,” she says; “These encounters may later create a bridge for constructing larger narratives, which go beyond someone’s personal story to a wider national or cultural history. The picture is then merely the starting point.”Linchpins of community engagement in Meiselas’s photographic storytelling form a collaborative approach that has manifested throughout her work, from strippers in New England to an insurrection in Nicaragua. Looking back over some of the key defining stories of her career for a new book On the Frontline, Meiselas provides an insightful personal commentary on the trajectory of her photographic practice and offers takeaway considerations for photographers looking to deepen their relationships with the subjects they work with.

Being photographed

While living in a boarding house in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1971, Meiselas turned the camera on herself first. The feelings she encountered with the subjects of her photographs would inform her collaborative approach henceforth: “To make a good portrait, you need to reveal a private moment, which can feel like an act of theft.”

“Then there is both the possibility of the construction of the portrait and the capture of a moment. I wanted to place myself in the boarding house because I lived there and was present. At the same time, I felt invisible. That invisibility creates tension throughout my work. I am present, but I want to avoid the focus on myself. I am not a ‘fly on the wall’: I don’t pretend not to be there, but I am not the ‘story.’ I might be the bridge, the guide, and in some sense the collaborator with the subject”.

Creating narrative

From 1972 to 1975, Meiselas spent summers photographing and interviewing women who performed striptease for small town carnivals in New England, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. With a collaborative approach that included interviews, she portrayed the dancers on stage and off, photographing their public performances as well as their private lives, along with their managers and the spectators of the show. When it came to displaying the work, the narrative included her images with accompanying sounds of their voices. The book interspersed excerpts of transcribed text throughout her pictures.

“I don’t see myself as an artist just working within a community of artists. I am most interested in the community from which the work actually comes. I resist the cultural label of ‘photojournalism,’ which puts one’s work into a box. This work was not assigned or produced for a specific publication, but it was later seen within specific publications, and there lies a great distinction. It was first seen on walls, not printed pages. The women brought me in, and the book later brought a hidden world to public attention, sharing a complex story from the inside out.”

Collaboration

Meiselas sees the act of a photograph as a collaboration that is not completed once the photograph is made, but the relationship between herself and her subject continues long afterward, as she finds creative ways to involve the people she has photographed. In her first work in Massachusetts, she showed the images she made to the subjects in them and asked how they saw themselves represented in her images. She then displayed their words alongside the portraits in the exhibition. “I was experimenting with how to bring their voice into the work. The subject has to want me to be there for me to feel that I can be there,” she explains.

Years later in Cova da Moura, Portugal, when her work was to be shown in Lisbon, she returned to the neighborhood that she had photographed, with a novel way of including her subjects. “I knew that none of the kids would go [downtown]. A museum just didn’t mean anything to them. I felt I had to work on a parallel project with the teenagers to coincide with the museum show.” So Meiselas led a photography workshop, giving them small point-and-shoots to work with, and then installed reproductions of her portraits and their photographs on the streets of their own community.

Returning and Giving back

Meiselas first went to Kurdistan to document Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign against the Kurdish population in Iraq. She then began working with Kurdish scholars and the community to gather and reproduce photographs from Western archives and family collections to create a visual history, in both book and exhibition form.

The second edition of the book gave her the opportunity to update another decade of history, and translate sections of the book into Sorani, the Central Kurdish language, and Turkish. However, unfortunately, the books were banned in Turkey, so Meiselas wasn’t able to deliver them over the border to Kurdistan. The books were reprinted in Spain and copies were shipped by boat to Dubai where they could be sent as airfreight straight to Kurdistan. There, Meiselas helped to distribute them to libraries, universities, families and all who had contributed.

“A photograph is always a record of a relationship. People had contributed photographs they had made or found and given them to a stranger in the interests of a history that was very precious to them. The cycle of return of what had been generously shared felt complete”.

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  • Home
  • About
  • Shop
    • Dynamic Symmetry Art Membership
    • Dynamic Symmetry Grids
    • Phone Consultation (30-Minute)
    • Phone Consultation (60-Minute)
    • Photography Portfolio Review
    • Single Image Review
  • The Art of Composition
  • Design for Photographers
  • Artists
    • Abbas
    • Olga Abramovo
    • Nick Alm
    • Christopher Anderson
    • Keliy Anderson-Staley
    • Michael John Angel
    • George Angelini
    • Denise Antaya
    • Juliette Aristides
    • Eric Armusik
    • Eve Arnold
    • Anna-Brith Arnsten
    • Olivia Arthur
    • Steven Assael
    • Igor V. Babailov
    • Anna Rose Bain
    • Garin Baker
    • Allan R. Banks
    • Micha Bar-Am
    • Bruno Barbey
    • Colleen Barry
    • Alan Merris Bell
    • Julie Bell
    • Jonas Bendiksen
    • Ian Berry
    • Gulay Berryman
    • ​Werner Bischof
    • Kirsten Leah Bitzer
    • Matt Black
    • Sarah Blesener
    • David Michael Bowers
    • Roger Dale Brown
    • Paul S. Brown
    • Mary Ross Buchholz
    • Kristie Bruzenak
    • Nadir Bucan
    • Dot Bunn
    • Scott Burdick
    • René Burri
    • John Buxton
    • Antoine Bruy
    • Svetlana Cameron
    • Dario Campanile
    • Enri Canaj
    • Cornell Capa
    • Robert Capa
    • Louis Carr
    • Henri Cartier-Bresson
    • Chien-Chi Chang
    • Turjoy Chowdhury
    • Jacob Collins
    • Mary Jane Q Cross
    • David Andrew Nishita Cheifetz
    • Antoine d'Agata
    • Carla D'aguanno
    • Marcos Damascena
    • Bruce Davidson
    • Carl De Keyzer
    • Jon deMartin
    • Raymond Depardon
    • Bieke Depoorter
    • Stephanie Deshpande
    • Patrick Devonas
    • Paul P D'Haese
    • Marina Dieul
    • Shaun Downey
    • Carolyn Drake
    • Thomas Dworzak
    • Nikos Economopoulos
    • Virgil Elliott
    • Megan K. Euell
    • Philippe Faraut
    • Faripour Forouhar
    • Martine Franck
    • Stuart Franklin
    • Leonard Freed
    • Thomas Freteur
    • Joke Frima
    • Paul Fusco
    • Tina Garrett
    • Gilberto Geraldo
    • Daniel Gerhartz
    • Bruce Gilden
    • Max Ginsberg
    • Stephen Gjertson
    • Burt Glinn
    • Jim Goldberg
    • Arina Gordienko
    • Adrian Gottlieb
    • David Gray
    • Daniel Graves
    • Daniel E. Greene
    • Philip Jones Griffiths
    • Harry Gruyaert
    • Jean Guamy
    • James Gurney
    • Clark Gussin
    • Mandy Hallenius
    • Philippe Halsman
    • Gordon Hanley
    • David Hardy
    • Price Harrison
    • George Hartley
    • Christine Hartman
    • Erich Hartmann
    • David Alan Harvey
    • Seth Haverkamp
    • Jeff Hein
    • Tim Hetherington
    • Ron Hicks
    • Greg Hildebrandt
    • Thomas Hoepker
    • ​Sohrab Hura
    • David Hurn
    • Maureen Hyde
    • Jason Patrick Jenkins
    • Richard Kalvar
    • Svetlana Kanyo​
    • Thomas Kegler
    • Michael Vince Kim
    • Michael Klein
    • Josef Koudelka
    • Wang Kun
    • Alain Laboile
    • Sarah Lamb
    • Joshua LaRock
    • Bryan Larsen
    • Urban Larsson
    • Herman Leonard
    • Robert Liberace​
    • He Lihuai
    • Edward Little
    • Jeremy Lipking
    • Vivian Maier
    • Sally Mann
    • Constantine Manos
    • Diana Markosian
    • Steve McCurry
    • Sydney McGinley
    • Sherrie McGraw
    • Susan Meiselas
    • Terje Adler Mork
    • Karen Offutt
    • Graydon Parrish
    • Christopher Parrott
    • Leszek Piotrowski
    • Denise Pollack
    • Aleksi Poutanen
    • Christopher Pugliese
    • Julio Reyes
    • Lissa Rivera
    • Cristina García Rodero
    • Sergio Roffo
    • Cesar Santos
    • David Saxe
    • Nelson Shanks
    • Jordan Sokol
    • Viktoria Sorochinski
    • Paweł Starzec
    • Victoria Steel
    • Gwendolyn Stine
    • Dennis Stock
    • Vicki Sullivan
    • Carol Lee Thompson
    • Dan Thompson
    • Larry Towell
    • Hsin-Yao Tseng
    • Boris Vallejo
    • James Van Fossan
    • Jeffrey R. Watts
    • ​Patricia Watwood
    • Alex Webb
    • Morgan Weistling
    • Shane Wolf
    • Anna Wypych
    • ​Robert Zeller
    • Kailin Zhao
    • Doug Zider
  • Books
    • Colour Control
    • Dynamic Symmetry in Composition
    • Dynamic Symmetry - The Greek Vase
    • Perspective Made Easy
    • Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures
    • The Art of Composition: A Simple Application of Dynamic Symmetry
    • The Art of Composition: A Simple Application of Dynamic Symmetry (1956)
    • The Classic Point of View
    • The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry
    • Treatise in Landscape Painting
  • Articles & Videos
    • 3 Bad Habits All Photographers Should Break (Video)
    • 3 Reasons Why Most Photography Workshops Aren't Worth the Money
    • 5 Approaches to Composition in Photography (And Why They Won't Teach You Anything About Design)
    • 5 Myths About Composition (Video)
    • 14 Line Armature (Video)
    • An Email Addressing the Practical Use of Dynamic Symmetry in Art
    • A New, Old Way to Teach Art
    • Armature of the Rectangle (Video)
    • Art Can't Be Taught?
    • Art Educator Mandy Hallenius: Classical Training in Art Opens Creative Choices
    • Artist Robert Florczak: Classical Ideals Give Culture Depth
    • Breaking Down a Dynamic Symmetry Rectangle (Video)
    • Classical Realism- Part 1, 2, and 3
    • Classical Drawing Atelier - Introduction
    • Classical Painting Atelier - Introduction
    • Compositional Studies
    • Creating a Portfolio: Advice from Magnum
    • Drawing Is Back in Fashion
    • Drawing Is the Heart by Juliette Aristides
    • Dynamic Symmetry and Wildlife
    • Dynamic Symmetry for Photographers
    • Dynamic Symmetry, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Myron Barnstone​
    • Dynamic Symmetry in Fine Art Sculpture
    • Film vs. Digital
    • Gamut in Composition (Video)
    • Geometry of Design - Introduction
    • Greatest Area of Contrast (Video)
    • History Painting and the Problem with Art Education
    • How Skilled Copyists Leave the Louvre with a Masterpiece Every Year
    • How the Arts Develop the Young Brain
    • If Anything's Art, Art's Nothing
    • If Everything Is Art, Then Nothing Is Art
    • Isn't There Something Incomprehensible, Magical, or Mystical About Art?
    • Is Photography Art?
    • Juliette Aristides on Composition: From the Book "Classical Drawing Atelier
    • Juliette Aristides: On Myron Barnstone
    • Juliette Aristides On TRAC With the Atelier Movement
    • Keep Your Composure
    • Kenyon Cox on Modern Art and Composition
    • Lessons in Classical Drawing - Introduction
    • Lessons in Classical Painting - Introduction
    • Magnum Photographers from Different Generations ​Talk About the Fabled Agency’s Past, Present, and Future
    • Mastering Classical Realism​ With Juliette Aristides
    • Myron Barnstone: A Life's Work
    • Myron Barnstone: An art career in perspective
    • Nick Alm: Derived From Empathy
    • One Question with Juliette Aristides
    • Pictorial Composition: An Introduction
    • Practice Doesn't Always Guarantee Success
    • Priceless Advice: A Personal Email From Myron Barnstone
    • The Art of Seeing and Visual Literacy
    • The Art of Selection
    • The Atelier Approach to Art Education
    • The Armature of the Rectangle
    • ​The Consequences of Taking a Stand
    • The Da Vinci Initiative
    • The Difference Between a Fine Art Print and a Work of Art
    • The Failure of Art Education in America
    • The Gap Between Photography and Art
    • The Number One Reason Why a Work of Art Will Fail
    • The Painter's Secret Geometry - Introduction
    • The Pendulum Has Swung With a Vengeance
    • The Place of Photography in Fine Art
    • The Road to Visual Literacy
    • What Are the Benefits of Atelier Trainin​g?
  • Art Highlights
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