Description

“When I first went to Nicaragua I never imagined that I’d spend the next 10 years photographing there,” says Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas. “By chance I arrived just before the insurrection in June 78 when everything was about to erupt. I got up every day without a plan and just photographed what I saw.” Originally published in 1981, Meiselas’s Nicaragua is a contemporary classic—a seminal contribution to the literature of concerned photojournalism. Nicaragua forms an extraordinary narrative of a nation in turmoil. Starting with a powerful and chilling evocation of the Somoza regime during its decline in the late 1970s, the images trace the evolution of the popular resistance that led to the insurrection, culminating with the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in 1979.

The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don't belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation.

Susan Meiselas
© Susan Meiselas | Magnum Photos

Susan Meiselas was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1948 and received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.A. in visual education from Harvard University. Her first major photographic essay focused on the lives of women doing striptease at New England country fairs, culminating in the celebrated project, Carnival Strippers.

Meiselas is one of the world’s foremost documentary photographers, best known for her coverage of human rights issues in Latin America—notably the insurrection in Nicaragua—as well as her portraits of those living on the periphery of society. Meiselas joined Magnum in 1976 and presently serves as the President of the Magnum Foundation.

© Susan Meiselas | Magnum Photos

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