Mediations by Susan Meiselas

Susan Meiselas Mediations

FundaciÓ Antoni Tà pies

Jeu de Paume

Damiani

Digging Down to the Meaning of Place Pia Viewing

Opposite page: Self-Portrait, from the series 44 Irving Street, 1971 Following pages: Archive material from the 44 Irving Street project, 1971 From left to right, top to bottom Contact sheet, Tenant, 1971 Excerpts of interviews with neighbours to accompany portraits Susan Meiselas's notebook during her MA Visual Studies for "Photography as Sociological Description", Cambridge, MA 1971 Contact sheet, 44 Irving Street boarding house, 1971

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Pia Viewing | Digging Down to the Meaning of Place

… the photographer with a five-day visa, gazing down—not for the first time—into a mass grave and realizing that history has offered no clue for what she is seeing. Thus she begins, not with the images that already exist, that overwhelm us with familiarity and ennui, and can only be made strange by relentless categorization and repetition and the judicious suspension of normative sharpness, but with the sense that where bodies were buried in secret there must also be a buried archive, limited in scope but immense nonetheless, waiting for resurrection. An archive, but not an atlas: the point here is not to take the world upon one’s shoulders, but to crouch down to the earth, and dig.1 Allan Sekula

S

usan Meiselas became a well-known

to create links with people, to take her from

photographer through the publication of

one place to another. The manner in which

her work made in the war zones of Nicaragua

she engages with her subject is essential

and El Salvador and other Central American

to all her work as she “activates” a form

countries, where she worked from 1978

of exchange with them and in so doing

to the early 1990s. What attracted her to

develops long-term relationships with many

Nicaragua? Was it the resounding economic

people she photographs. This process is

and political interest of the United States

launched through the identification of a place

in this area of the world that fed a burning

or a situation and is followed by research on

desire to leave her home country and reveal

the context. Her photographs, other images

the other side of the story? Or maybe even

and archive material that she collects, are

the desire to unravel the complexity of war?

closely linked to places characterised by

As Allan Sekula points out in the quote

social interaction or by political and military

above that refers to the Kurdistan work

action over territorial conflict.

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(1991–97), which Meiselas developed after Nicaragua and El Salvador, she works directly

She began by investigating her own immediate

with a given situation and its various layers of

surroundings. 44 Irving Street (1971)3 is a

meaning. Present on site, she “digs down”

series of photographs of the occupants of a

in search of visible elements that signify past

boarding house where Meiselas lived when she

experiences in certain places where she

was a graduate student.4 Each image shows

photographs the people and the traces of

a tenant in a corner of his/her room. Some of

actions, she records the testimonies of those

the photographs are exhibited with a short text

who remain, gathers archival material, jots

(handwritten or typed) written by the person

down the facts...

portrayed. The short narrative is about how they perceived themselves in the photographs

Her incessant desire to travel and discover

of their dwellings. For example: “I looked at

arose when she started, in the early 1970s, to use the photographic image to investigate,

Entrance, from the series 44 Irving Street, 1971

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some of the other pictures, as well as my own,

shows the extent to which the process of

and was struck by something that I feel is quite

appropriation is important to the artist. Rather

indicative of this house and the people in it,

than a sociological survey of the inhabitants of

and thus indirectly of me as well. Obviously

this area in Cambridge Massachusetts, the work

everyone living here, for one reason or another,

brings together individual testimonies, bridging

has chosen to live alone. I am sure that I am like

the gap between people lodging in the same

the rest of the people in this place, with friends

building who did not necessarily interact in the

and interests on the outside, but I still decide

communal spaces like the kitchen and dining

to live alone. My picture shows me standing in

room. The driving force behind the work has

my small world, looking out at everything and

more to do with a desire to create contact, to

everyone. People can come in on occasion and

use the photographic image as a marker of

be part of my world, but only for a short while.”

what Walter Benjamin called Jetztzeit ("now-

While the images pinpoint identity, the texts

time") than with making a sociological study or

produce narrative. This work emphasises

showing intimate places of abode.

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literal description (both visual and scriptural).

It is about location and dwelling. Meiselas

After a primary experience in exploring “the

interacted with her subjects to explore, through

use of photography as a pedagogical tool”,6

her images, their relationship to the place as

Meiselas “became an artist-in-residence

such. Their written response also becomes

with the South Carolina and Mississippi

part of the final artwork when exhibited, which

arts commissions in 1973”.7 The residency

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Pia Viewing | Digging Down to the Meaning of Place

Porch Portraits (1974) is a series of black and white portraits taken of the inhabitants of the Kingstree area in South Carolina. Some of the children in these single or group portraits went to the school Meiselas worked at, but it was by chance that she came across their homes while driving around the area. This photographic essay shows people of all ages in front of their houses or in their gardens. The small wooden houses, with open verandas (or porches), are typical southern American homes9; adults pose, children look towards her fascinated by the camera or can be seen playing in the yard, trees, long grass, a car, washing lines, domestic animals... The harshness and the austerity of these scenes are surely not entirely due to the poverty of this region. programme took place in primary schools

“Social integration takes place via inclusion

where she taught visual literacy through

in space, identity refers to an alterity that

photographic practice with the young

finds forms of exclusion and forms of

children (10–12 years old). Meiselas explains

inclusion in space, forms necessary to the

in an interview with Kristen Lubben just what

regulation of external contributions that

this project meant to her: “I recently heard

mark, alter and renew the composition

from someone who was a student in that

of a social group... A territory has a value

classroom... This young boy (now a man),

in a geography of the representations of

Richie, talked about how photography had

the world. This geography articulates the

strengthened his connexion to community...

definition of a here within reach of all of

I think I made a similar kind of connexion

us, as it articulates the side-lining of an

myself in that classroom: linking to the world

elsewhere to the exclusion of another.”10

through photography. Or finding a reason

The specificity of these images lies in the

to be in the world. A reason to be curious

encounter itself: the young photographer

about the world. That experience taught

was learning how to establish contact with

me a way to engage”. So it was both the

her subjects. She was testing the limits of

geographical shift and the connexion through

the photographic approach. Immersed in

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the people she had been working with, using photography, that brought Meiselas to develop her practice further.

Opposite page: Becky, from the series 44 Irving Street, 1971 Above: Tenant, from the series 44 Irving Street, 1971

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Pia Viewing | Digging Down to the Meaning of Place

a territory for which she had no map, she

reciprocated by sending a print to each of

tested the porosity of the social boundaries

the persons photographed. What do these

in this open, barren and lonely territory.

images say about American society in the

Hardly any form of physical boundaries was

mid-1970s? How could she justify making

visible between public and private space as

photographs of these places?

she intuitively explored how far she could penetrate the space in order to connect with

Following this experience, Meiselas developed

the people living there.

a community-based project in Lando, one

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of several old company-owned mill towns in The Porch Portraits project helped her to

South Carolina, with Judy Inabinet, the wife

understand how to reach out to unknown

of the local Methodist preacher, a central

areas, to trust her sense of space and to

figure in this small traditional town where,

build relationships linking people to places

generation after generation, the inhabitants

through her photographic practice. She

remained anchored to the “traditional� setting

wanted to portray these homes and the

of the private enterprise. Meiselas worked

ways of life there, instinctively linking up her

with a group of high-school students and

institutional teaching experience with her personal photographic practice through this investigation. Considering the photographic practice as a form of exchange, she

Opposite page: Contact sheet, South Carolina, from the series Porch Portraits, 1974 Above: South Carolina, 1974, from the series Porch Portraits, 1974

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some adult community members to “create

Lando, marked the Bicentennial celebrations

a photo genealogy of Lando by collecting

of the town. It was held in public gathering

old photographs and oral histories from the

places such as the Post office and the

families who lived there all their lives. ” The

company store and showed an amazing

project, which was supported by The South

chronological “map” produced on site.14

Carolina Arts Commission and Polaroid

The new portraits updated the collection

Foundation, involved research into the history

of “vintage” archive material and therefore

of the town through early photographs

confirm the process’s legibility. The work

of the town in the 1880s, archive material

remained within the community after the

from family albums and “portraits of the

exhibition but this project enabled the artist

townspeople of the present... taken in familiar

to appropriate the work as a process, which,

settings, in homes that have histories of the

retrospectively, is indeed coherent to her

families passing through them, on porches

approach in many other projects.15

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that bear often too much resemblance to their past state, and activities that continue

Documentary photography, having a certain

to bring people together. ” The exhibition

ethical bond to the representation of reality,

A photographic genealogy – The History of

enables the visual study of the image to

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be part of a descriptive process where the work acts as a “mediator” between history (referring to collective memory), the subjects of the images and the outside viewer (the exhibition visitor for example). Meiselas uses the image as a reference point to which memory can refer, designating and representing an active space inside the frame.16 Evidently all photographs link time and place together, but the specificity of her documentary practice is to link place to the living experience of the subject at a particular time. As a visual study of place, the process implies questioning how people are connected to place as a notion of identification and orientation: drawing attention to the manner in which the spaces are used and questioning how life occurs or “takes place” in an identified location.

Indeed, the link between the presence of the

Mott Street, in the subway or on the beach.

subject and the place is a strong aspect of

The nature of the photographs is induced

Meiselas’s work, and one that she developed

by the spatial organisation of the places

from her early works onwards.

where the adolescents interact. They seem completely at ease in the photographs,

Only three years later, Meiselas went to

showing the extent to which they belong to

cover the uprisings in Nicaragua, where

these public spaces. During the first years of

she worked on and off for a period of more

the project (1975–78) the subject of the work

than twenty-five years. However, before

is very definitely the presence of the group.

heading off to Nicaragua in 1978, she

Each separate moment updates the series.

began a series of photographs showing

The strong sense of presence that the girls

incidental encounters in the streets around

render in the photographs shows the desire

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her home. In particular, she noticed the presence of a group of young teenage girls who hung out together in the streets of Little Italy, New York: the Prince Street Girls (1975–90). The series of black and white prints portrays specific moments on the street corner between Prince Street and

Opposite page: Spread from The Old Mill Stream, community publication, Lando, South Carolina, 1975, pp. 2-3 Above: Community viewers at the exhibition A Photographic Genealogy – The History of Lando, Lando, South Carolina, 1974 Following pages: Contact sheet, scenes on Mott Street, Little Italy, New York, 1975, from the series Prince Street Girls, 1975–90

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of the group to participate actively in the

the possibility of their death. There were, I

process of the work. However, there was a

don’t know, weeks or months in which I drove

change in the development of this work over

around Nicaragua trying to think what should

the twenty-five-year period that it covers.

I photograph? What will they do? What would

When Meiselas starts to work in Nicaragua,

they destroy? So what should I document to

the regular acquaintance with her subjects

make sure there was a record? And who would

is cut. The core of the subject matter evolves

they kill? Who would they kill first? Which of

from the study of how the girls interact in

my friends? Which of the people I last saw?”19

different places to portraits which, combined,

Exploring and framing place took on a

evoke the narrative of their lives. In the images

different meaning in these circumstances. It is

of the marriages or even the portraits of

interesting to note that Meiselas took this into

mother and child, the notion of place became

account by creating a specific work on the

almost obsolete in the Prince Street Girls series. This shift took place after she began to work in Nicaragua. The girls were growing up and had moved out of the area, some left the city with their families or got married, left to create families of their own – so the group broke up and no longer used public space as their playground.18 Moreover, the strong contrast between “home” and guerrilla warfare in the hills between Nicaragua and El Salvador most probably had an everlasting impact on Meiselas’s life and work.

Referring to the guerrilla war zones in Nicaragua, she explains how the image, even before it is taken, becomes part of a potential archive in the photographer’s mind.

The point that she stresses is the role she felt she had in recording the history of a territory at war: “I went into a period where I felt as if every time I was photographing something or someone, I was thinking about that moment when they would no longer be there. The present tense became impossible. I couldn’t shoot because I kept feeling as if holding up my camera was an acknowledgement of

Opposite page: Contact prints, 1976, from the series Prince Street Girls, 1975–90 Below: Note on the series Prince Street Girls, 23 May 1978

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subject. Entitled Reframing History (2004), she

a community arts-based enterprise called

returned to Nicaragua over twenty years later

Multistory, which she contacted and began

and installed printed murals of photographs

working with women who had decided

she took during the war (1978–79) where

to break away from abusive husbands

the initial photographs had been taken.

or enclosed situations to a refuge for a

Place is therefore the central issue in this

transitory period where they were able

project. The artist not only revives collective

to live in private accommodation with a

memory using her photographs as the main

communal kitchen, living-room, child’s

visual reference but she also makes a film,

playroom and backyard. These sheltered

Pictures from a Revolution (1991), showing

and controlled places help to protect

the process she sets in motion in order to

women and their young children from

find the people she had covered in combat

various forms of domestic violence.

one decade before. The whole procedure

Spanning over a period of two years,

points to the impossibility of the image to

Meiselas’s project included research,

represent duration. By reactivating collective

many interactive workshops based on

memory and recording the process, Meiselas

experimental practice collaborating with

shows the relevance of her process; that she

the women and a small group comprised

recognises that the time of the photographic

of a local artist, writer, assistants and the

image is hardly sufficient to reveal the plurality

Multistory team to produce storytelling, life-

of moments enacted in one particular place.

maps or text image collages and finally the making of a book.21

The identification of places as sources or anchoring points is a common

Colour photographs of sparse rooms

denominator throughout Meiselas’s

containing only objects: an empty room

practice. By encouraging the participation

with one single bed and a chair or a room

of the people she portrays in her work,

scattered with toys or a room adorned with

she reinvests in the image by introducing

a long line of shoes laid straight against

oral or written testimony. This process was

the wall. In some rooms, a pin board or a

used in a somewhat different manner in a

mirror on a wall, or even a chest of drawers

work on domestic violence. Rather than

and a wardrobe, filling the small spaces

linking place and identity together (like in

considerably and fragmenting the monotony

Nicaragua for example), this project had to

of these unidentifiable impersonal dwellings.

protect the identity of the subjects making

A room with light green walls, a single bed

the place the most central element of the

with a duvet and a pillow, a half empty Coke

series. In 2015, Meiselas was invited to

bottle on the floor and a mobile phone

work in the region of the “Black Country”,

charger plugged into the wall with the wire

the West Midlands region of Great Britain.

dangling on the floor, no phone (see p. 157).

After some investigation she learnt about

A courtyard, a washing line, a tiled area

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Pia Viewing | Digging Down to the Meaning of Place

enclosed by red brick walls with pink and

are and who they will be. This experience

red toys lying abandoned on the ground,

has reaffirmed for me the value and the

a garden with green short (artificial) grass,

importance of documentary photography, and

many autumn leaves, some plastic toys and

at the same time it has made me even more

a painted mural… Looking at these images

aware of how complex the act of reading

puts one in the position of an observer who

meaning from photographs can be.”22

questions, first and foremost, the function of this place. The photographs appear to be pointing at a dividing line between absence and presence, between quiet intimacy and the necessity to communicate, between appearing and disappearing, between belonging and deciding not to belong, between imagination and evidence, between hesitation and decision.

From one work to another, Meiselas elaborates her work, giving most of the artworks additional layers of meaning and amplifying them as time goes on. Over the years, she developed a corpus of photographic essays and films composed of many separate narratives from all over the world. As described above, the notion of place plays the pivotal role in the meaning and the purpose of the works. They tell their story, relate to contemporary societies and refer to their historical heritages. Reading the images as traces of what is bound to disappear is also the function of the complex artworks that Meiselas produces. However, as an artist using all sorts of material including her own photographs, she emphasizes the importance of the role of the image as a means of recognition in an on-going timeless process: “Those photographs that provide people with a sense of who they have been, in order perhaps to make sense of who they

JoJo, Carol and Lisa at the corner of Prince Street and Mott Street, Little Italy, New York, 1976, from the series Prince Street Girls, 1975–90

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Endnotes Allan Sekula, “Photography and the Limits of National Identity”, in Camera Austria International, no. 95, 2006.

2 New York Times Magazine, 30 July 1978, Life, September 1981, The Times, 21 February 1982. During this period, Susan Meiselas also worked in the Philippines, Columbia, Chile, Indonesia, Argentina and Mexico.

3 The title refers to the address in New York.

4 In 1971, Meiselas did a photography course while undertaking her masters at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. After graduating that year, she started working on ways in which to use visual media in schools.

5 Extract from Meiselas’s photographic series 44 Irving Street, 1971.

6 Kristen Lubben, “An interview with Susan Meiselas”, Susan Meiselas. In History, International Center of Photography and Steidl, New York, Göttingen, 2008, p.17.

7 Ibid, p.16.

8 Learn to See (1972–74) is a project by Meiselas on teaching visual literacy. Learn to See: A sourcebook of photography projects by teachers and students, edited by Susan Meiselas (Cambridge Mass.: Polaroid Foundation, 1974) was published the same year that Meiselas started the Porch Portraits, Ibid., p.17.

9 Meiselas spent her early years in similar rural surroundings (Virginia).

10 “L’intégration sociale passe par l’inscription spatiale, l’identité renvoie à une altérité qui trouve dans l’espace des formes d’exclusion et des formes d’inclusion, des formes nécessaires à la régulation des apports extérieurs qui marquent, altèrent et renouvellent la composition d’un groupe social... Un territoire a une valeur dans une géographie des représentations du monde. Cette géographie articule la circonscription d’un ici à la saisie d’un nous, comme elle articule la mise à l’écart d’un ailleurs à l’exclusion d’un autre.” Pierre Pellegrino, Le sens de l’espace. L’époque et le lieu, Paris, éd. Economica, 2000, p.12.

11 Only one person invited Meiselas to take their portrait inside a house.

12 Extract of the project description by Meiselas in a letter she wrote to the Polaroid Foundation, 24 May 1975.

13 Ibid.

14 Meiselas used this opportunity to involve the school children and the community in photography as a medium. They requisitioned the school darkroom for printing the new images.

15 Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997), Chile from Within (1990), Archives of Abuse (1991), Encounters with the Dani (2001–03) for example.

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16 “Space is only active, therefore, because it is made up of places where things are located within a force-field at any particular moment (Feingold 2004). In a Leibnizian view it is the powers of events and objects taking place that make space appear ‘active’”, John Agnew, “Space and place”, in J. Agnew and D. Livingstone, Handbook of Geographical Knowledge, London, Sage, 2011, chapter 23, p. 9.

17 A small Central American country defined by the borders with Honduras (to the north) and Costa Rica (to the south), the Caribbean sea to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Its turbulent twentieth-century history is due to the direct American involvement in Nicaraguan politics.

18 Meetings still occur between Meiselas and some of the “Prince Street Girls”, who have moved out of this neighbourhood to other parts of New York or, in the case of one girl, abroad. Apparently, the images bring them together “just as before”.

19 Meiselas, extract from the voice-over, Pictures from a Revolution, film, 1991.

20 In 1991, Meiselas realised a commission on domestic violence: Archives of Abuse (1991–92) using the investigations of the San Francisco Police department as the archive material.

21 A Room of Their Own, West Bromwich, Multistory, 2017.

22 Meiselas talks about the Kurdistan project in an interview with Melissa Harris, “Susan Meiselas”, in On Location: Studio visits with Annie Leibovitz, Lorna Simpson, Susan Meiselas, Cindy Sherman, Adam Fuss, Joël-Peter Witkin, Jon Goodman, New York, Aperture, 1993, p. 24.

Returning home from Manhattan Beach, Little Italy, New York, 1978, from the series Prince Street Girls, 1975–90

Pia Viewing | Digging Down to the Meaning of Place

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