PALERMO - With his goal he investigated countries like Nicaragua, where he documented the Sandinista revolution, and Latin America. She is considered one of the pioneers of modern photojournalism. Susan Meiselas, 71, born in Baltimore, a photographer among the first women admitted to the famous Magnum Photos agency, arrives in Palermo on December 14 to inaugurate her exhibition at the international photography center directed by Letizia Battaglia.
Intimate strangers, this is the title of the exhibition, presents Carnival Stripes and Pandora's Box, two of the works of the award-winning author, known for making photography an important means of social denunciation to combat all types of violence, from domestic violence - which she tells in various projects such as Archives of Abuse and (1992), Room of their Own (2017) - to that of wars, as well as an instrument of civil commitment for the defense of fundamental human rights, and in particular of women, for which this year has won the Women In Motion award. In Carnival Strippers a job runs along three consecutive summers, from 1972 to 1975, in which Meiselas follows the strippers of country fairs in New England, Vermont and South Carolina. "A careful and scrupulous documentation made of the black and white snapshots not only of the performances on the stage, but also of their most intimate moments, to which the photographer accompanies the audio recordings of the voices of the protagonists she herself interviewed - the promoters affirm - The result is a multimedia story which, due to its originality and depth, marks a turning point in the history of photojournalism, opening the doors of the Magnum to Meiselas, the most coveted and celebrated photojournalism agency in the world of which it joined in 1967 " .
From that moment on, the involvement of the subjects photographed through direct testimony became a feature of the work of Susan Meiselas, a methodology of investigation that constitutes for the artist not only an analytical practice but also a form of civil commitment. It dates back to twenty years later, Pandora's Box (1995) - second part of the exhibition itinerary - reportage that can be considered the ideal extension of Carnival Strippers. The series, made in a sadomasochistic club in New York, reveals the existence of another relationship with violence and pain, which is sought and self-inflicted by choice. Pandora's Box transports us to an exclusive 4000 square meter location in a Manhattan loft, called the 'Disneyland of Domination'. Obscurely theatrical and at the same time not studied, these photographs explore a network of opulent rooms and sets of a historic New York "dungeon", where the protagonist Mistress Raven together with her staff of 14 young women performs rites of pain and pleasure strongly formalized. The exhibition is part of the programming of the international center of photography in Palermo dedicated to the great contemporary photographers in collaboration with Magnum Photos, which has already seen protagonists Joseph Koudelka and Franco Zecchin.
