ABSTRACT
Susan Meiselas, an American photographer who has documented conflict and human rights issues, has been active in the field of photography for four decades. Meiselas has won many awards, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal, the Leica Medal of Excellence, the Hasselblad Award, the Cornell Capa Infinity Award, the Harvard Arts Medal, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Remember, photos are inherently de-contextualized. Everything readers do with it after they take the picture constitutes the work to contextualize; and it always needs further recontextualizing. The everyday became more about the mundane as connected to the larger conflict. There’s an example in our Nicaragua book of an “ordinary” moment—a young woman in the street pouring a cup of coffee for a young guerrilla. Many people have said, “Gee, that’s such an odd photograph.” A photograph is evidential and that can be powerful. The most obvious example is of Qazi Muhammad, who is depicted in an image that was contributed to the Kurdistan project.
