“I met her when she joined Magnum, in 1979. She’d already been around a lot, and working in ethnography had given her a sociological approach. For my generation Carnival Strippers was absolutely astonishing. She’s really got guts and I enjoy discussing with her: how to photograph war, what approach to take, what words to use. She even came to Chad with me. She’s loyal, too: she goes back to the places she’s photographed.”
Raymond Depardon

Carnival strippers
Aselection from Susan Meiselas’ first monograph Carnival Strippers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976 ; reprinted by Whitney Museum/ Steidl, 2003), which explores girl shows in the back tents of small carnivals in New England in the ’70s. Her documentary of this highly charged scene marks a particular moment in American history and the feminist movement as it intimately explores the lives of the strippers and the men who pay to see them.
 
Reframing History
Photographic documents of history have histories of their own. They become part of the history they document. Memory is not just of history; it shapes history. It has a power over history. Susan Meiselas photo- graphed the Nicaraguan popular insurrection that overthrew Somoza’s National Guard in July 1979. Twenty-five years later, she enlarged eighteen of her photographs to mural size and installed them near the places where they were originally taken. Her project extends the cycle that began with an historical event that deeply affected those close to it and continued to be of importance to them long after it had ceased to be a focus of world attention.