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 MeiselasI'm deeply interested in the photograph as a record of an encounter and enjoy putting myself in a timeline of image-makers, alongside other travelers, such as anthropologists, colonists, missionaries, even tourists. I do that to emphasize subjectivity, rather than privilege any single perspective - I see myself as only one of many storytellers.
Susan MeiselasFor a long time I've lived with the inadequacy of that frame to tell everything I knew, and I think a lot about what is outside of the frame.
Susan MeiselasIf Instagram had been available when I was working in Nicaragua in 1978, I'm sure I would have wanted to use it as a way of reporting directly from the streets during the insurrection.
Susan Meiselas