Author Description

This exhaustive monograph of Susan Meiselas will be released in occasion of the retrospective that will take place at Tàpies Foundation in Barcelone, Jeu de Paume in Paris and SFMOMA in San Francisco. Mediations is published by Damiani/Jeu de Paume/Fondation Tàpies. 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.