Susan Meiselas: On the Frontline

Product Description This landmark book offers a synthesis of celebrated Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas’s views on her work and the role of the documentary photographer. Through text drawn largely from exclusive interviews with editor Mark Holborn, she offers a remarkable commentary on her career, from early work with carnival strippers, through groundbreaking reportage on Nicaragua and El Salvador, to projects encompassing subjects as varied as the Dani tribe of Indonesia, the Kurds of Northern Iraq and victims of domestic violence in California. Central to Meiselas’s work are themes of collaboration, return and exchange. With over 110 photographs – some classics, others rarely published – this book demonstrates how the frontline on which Meiselas has worked involves a bearing of witness and a gathering of evidence. As Meiselas has stated: ‘To continue on is to be curious – to be compelled to confront, to examine, to expose, to engage, and not know where you will end up or how the journey will change you. The frontline is always a choice.’ Table of Contents Introduction • 1. The Exchange • 2. El Pueblo • 3. History • 4. The Interior Review Meiselas doesn't spare us details, instead she focuses us in on them and there is to be no avoiding the truth. She has a message and she delivers it in the most powerful way she knows- through her photographs. --Black and White Photography With the publication of a new book, entitled On the Frontline, Meiselas' extraordinary feats are brought back to the forefront of popular consciousness, where they deserve to stay --AnOther Magazine From the Back Cover This landmark book offers a synthesis of celebrated Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas’s views on her work and the role of the documentary photographer. Through text drawn largely from exclusive interviews with editor Mark Holborn, she offers a remarkable commentary on her career, from early work with carnival strippers, through groundbreaking reportage on Nicaragua and El Salvador, to projects encompassing subjects as varied as the Dani tribe of Indonesia, the Kurds of Northern Iraq and victims of domestic violence in California. Central to Meiselas’s work are themes of collaboration, return and exchange. With over 110 photographs – some classics, others rarely published – this book demonstrates how the frontline on which Meiselas has worked involves a bearing of witness and a gathering of evidence. As Meiselas has stated: ‘To continue on is to be curious – to be compelled to confront, to examine, to expose, to engage, and not know where you will end up or how the journey will change you. The frontline is always a choice.’ About the Author Susan Meiselas received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and her MA in visual education from Harvard University. For her groundbreaking work, she has received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for her project in Nicaragua (1979); Leica Award for Excellence (1982); Engelhard Award from the Institute of Contemporary Art (1985); the Hasselblad Foundation Photography Prize (1994); Cornell Capa Infinity Award (2005); and most recently the Harvard Arts Medal (2011). In 1992, she was named a MacArthur Fellow. Meiselas joined Magnum Photos in 1976 and is president of the Magnum Foundation.