SUSAN MEISELAS STUDIO
Role: Digital Imaging Assistant, 2018-2022
Working for four years in Susan Meiselas’s studio in Manhattan, I explored and managed a 40+ year digital archive by the award-winning Magnum photographer. As part of my role, I fulfilled image requests, maintained the studio equipment and website, researched and supported the production of several exhibitions, collaborated on multimedia projects and edited video, and aided in the development of books including Making Of Carnival Strippers (2022), Eyes Open (2021), and Tar Beach (2020).
Carnival Strippers Revisited (2022)
I scanned, reviewed, researched, and helped select never-before-published color film from Meiselas’s project Carnival Strippers, first published in 1976. This new edition included a book called Making Of, providing more details about Meiselas’s process, as well as the color photographs. The book was named one of the best photo books of the year by The New York Times.
Cartographies du Corps (2022)
In collaboration with Marta Gentilucci, I edited a series of videos for a unique audio-visual project that debuted as a site-specific installation in the Chapel Saint-Blaise during the Arles photo festival in 2022. The videos created a chorus of sound and film on multiple screens throughout the space. “Cartographies du corps traces a map of the skin and the gestures of aging women that speak about engaged lives, still filled with energy, full of beauty – a beauty that comes from the layering of their experience. Susan Meiselas & Marta Gentilucci partnered to capture in images and sound the vital force that inhabits these bodies, the intensity of their past lives and the enduring hope of the life that remains to be lived, against the representation of old age as the absence of opportunity, or even illness, loneliness, and deprivation.” (Les Rencontres d'Arles)
Through a Woman’s Lens (2020-2021)
I helped with preparation and production of a major exhibition of Meiselas’s artwork that unexpectedly shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the physical display of Meiselas’s work—focused on her exploration of women’s issues and women’s perspectives over the course of her career—we also collaborated with the Milwaukee Art Museum to provide additional materials for a virtual version of the show.