Susan Meiselas @ Milwaukee Art Museum - Through a Woman’s Lens - Virtual Exhibition

Susan Meiselas: Through a Woman’s Lens 

Milwaukee Art Museum - Virtual Tour

Through March 14, 2021

SUSAN MEISELAS

[1976 DNC], 1976; printed 2020.

Gelatin silver print, 8 x 10 in.

Courtesy the artist.

© Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos

SUSAN MEISELAS

Roseann on the way to Manhattan Beach, New York, 1978, 

from the series Prince Street Girls, 1975–92. 

Courtesy the artist. 

© Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos

A virtual exhibition presented by the Milwaukee Art Museum highlights the four decades of work of documentary photographer Susan Meiselas, and is the first to focus on the artist’s long-standing commitment to working with and sharing the stories of women. Susan Meiselas: Through a Woman’s Lens presents never-before-shown photographs alongside iconic series that raise challenging questions about the documentary practice and the relationship between photographer and subject. 

“Susan Meiselas’s collaborative practice honors the people she photographs and those that view her pictures,” said Lisa Sutcliffe, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts. “By intuitively following her own instincts over the course of her career, Meiselas has built a unique body of work that examines the many lives and stories of women that might have otherwise been overlooked. Her inclusive process brings a diverse array of voices to bear on issues from human rights to civil conflict, and encourages us to become more responsible in how we consume and interpret images.”

Throughout her nearly fifty-year career, Susan Meiselas has consistently focused her lens on what she believes the wider public needs to see, including women living and working at the edges of the mainstream. Her subjects have ranged from carnival strippers at county fairs to women engaged in resistance in Central America. Collaboration is an integral part of the artist’s practice, and she works closely with her subjects to bring their voices to the issues they face, often returning to communities she has photographed to reconnect and examine how their perspectives have changed over time. This collaborative spirit was extended in 2020 through the creation of an expansive virtual tour, which allows visitors near and far to hear from not only the curator and the artist but also the people in her photographs and her many partners.

The exhibition features selections from the artist’s earliest series, including 44 Irving Street, Prince Street Girls, and Carnival Strippers; vivid color photographs that Susan Meiselas made during the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua; and never-before-shown pictures of women training in the U.S. Army, as well as an examination of the experience of a Filippino mail-order bride. 

Through a Woman’s Lens is also showing photographs that Susan Meiselas took at the Democratic National Convention in 1976, which examined the role of women in the party. This exhibition marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the women’s right to vote. 

“I am excited to have this opportunity to share some of my lesser-known work from the 1970s and reflect on how my practice has evolved,” said Susan Meiselas. “I was part of the generation following the Women’s Movement and benefited from what others had fought hard for. I felt I could explore as broadly as I could imagine and challenge myself to go beyond boundaries and have these experiences shape my thinking and my life. ”

Since 1976, Susan Meiselas has been a member of the international photographic cooperative Magnum Photo. The cooperative is composed of some of the world’s most renowned photographers, who “share a vision to chronicle world events, people, places and culture with a powerful narrative that defies convention, shatters the status quo, redefines history and transforms lives.”

In 2019, Susan Meiselas received the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize Prize for her survey show Mediations, which was organized with the Jeu de Paume in Paris and later traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She was also the first winner of the Women in Motion photography prize at the Rencontres d’Arles festival. She has received numerous additional awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992. 

Susan Meiselas: Through a Woman’s Lens is curated by Lisa J. Sutcliffe, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts, Milwaukee Art Museum.

MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM

700 N. Art Museum Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53202

mam.org

Leila Alaoui Restrospective virtual tour by Somerset House, London - Rite of Passage - Guided by Ekow Eshun

Leila Alaoui: Rite of Passage

New Virtual Tour guided by writer and curator, Ekow Eshun

Somerset House, London - Online

Through 28 February 2021

Responding to the restrictions of England’s second lockdown, Somerset House invites audiences to join the virtual tour of its new exhibition Leila Alaoui: Rite of Passage, guided by award-winning broadcaster and cultural commentator Ekow Eshun. Forming the first major UK retrospective of works from the celebrated French-Moroccan photographer, video artist and activist Leila Alaoui, the exhibition opened (11 October 2020) to coincide with 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in October. For those who missed it in its opening weeks, the virtual tour offers the opportunity to still discover Leila Alaoui’s timely and moving work, and gain insight into the evolution of her practice. ​

Acclaimed for capturing and preserving the unseen stories of individuals and communities displaced by conflict and unrest, Rite of Passage offers an intimate portrait into the rich cultural identities and resilience of societies facing difficult and uncertain realities. The subjects of Leila Alaoui’s works are pictured across the contemporary Mediterranean landscape and beyond, from Syrian refugees fleeing​ civil war in Lebanon to young North Africans seeking an alternative future in Europe. Tragically, Leila Alaoui was killed whilst working on a photography project for a women’s rights campaign for Amnesty International in Burkina Faso in 2016. She was critically wounded during a terrorist attack in Ouagadougou, passing away from her injuries shortly afterwards at the age of 33. The Leila Alaoui Foundation was created to preserve her work, defend her values, and inspire and support artistic engagement.​

Rite of Passage showcases three of Leila Alaoui’s defining series of photographic works created between 2008 and 2014 - Les Marocains (2010-14), No Pasara (2008) and Natreen (2013). Throughout each series, Leila Alaoui seeks to challenge the often cliched portrayals and exoticisation of North Africa and the Arab world to present a nuanced narrative of the region, its inhabitants and immigration. The exhibition also presents Leila Alaoui’s final unfinished video work L’Île du Diable (Devil’s Island) (2015), which explores the lives of a 1960’s generation of dispossessed migrant workers in France. Showing great sensitivity towards her subjects, Leila Alaoui’s images are both informed yet artistic, giving a human face to the people who often become lost and misrepresented behind waves of news coverage and statistics.  ​

LEILA ALAOUI

Tamesloht, from the series Les Marocains, 2011

Image courtesy of Foundation Leila Alaoui & GALLERIA CONTINUA

Leila Alaoui’s celebrated series Les Marocains is a striking series of life-sized portraits. Taken during the artist’s extensive travels across her home country of Morocco, Leila Alaoui drew inspiration from influential 20th century photographers Richard Avedon and Robert Frank, whose seminal works captured the overlooked margins of American life, as well as her own heritage as a native Moroccan, to create a collection of portraits which capture a rich survey of the diverse cultures and ethnicities of the region. Using a mobile studio, Leila Alaoui invited men, women, and children of different communities within busy cities and secluded settlements, with whom she spent time getting to know, as her sitters. Framed against a simple black background, Leila Alaoui captures the innate pride and dignity of her subjects, allowing both the presence of her subjects and the vibrant aesthetic of their traditional dress, adorned with products of a rich artistic culture, to shine. With each portrait, Leila Alaoui creates new transcultural and inclusive social imagery in an attempt to undo the historically misunderstood representation of the region and its communities.     ​

LEILA ALAOUI

No Pasara, 2008 

Image courtesy of Foundation Leila Alaoui & GALLERIA CONTINUA

No Pasara (Entry Denied) is Leila Alaoui’s first photographic series created in 2008. The series, commissioned by the European Union, sees Leila Alaoui use her camera to document the often-unseen perspectives of those living on the challenging margins of society. The series follows groups of young Moroccans who have become stuck in their journeys, seeking passage to Europe from Moroccan port cities including Nador and Tangier. After spending time getting to know her subjects, hearing stories of the homes, and the lives and relationships sacrificed in the hope of finding a better life on the other side of the Mediterranean, Leila Alaoui brings the realities and voices of those whose lives have been halted into focus of the frame. Here in black and white, young men are pictured waiting pensively at the waterfront and amongst the ruins of buildings, dreaming of starting a new life across the barrier of the sea.   ​

LEILA ALAOUI

Natreen, 2013

Image courtesy of Foundation Leila Alaoui & GALLERIA CONTINUA

Echoing the stories of the lives on hold in No Pasara, the 2013 series Natreen (We Wait), commissioned by the Danish Refugee Council, sees Alaoui travel to Lebanon to document and raise awareness for the humanitarian crisis faced by Syrian refugees fleeing chaos and war. Acting further to dispel the stereotypical representations of refugees as shown within modern day media, Leila Alaoui captures the strength, beauty and relatability of her subjects, with each subject holding the viewers gaze to create an instant connection.   ​

Rite of Passage culminates in Leila Alaoui’s final unfinished project, L’Île du Diable (Devil’s Island). In this single-channel video work, which sees Alaoui moving away from photography to experiment with video and installation, Leila Alaoui explores the experience of a generation of migrant workers who moved to support the huge growth in industry in Europe following World War II. Bringing together photographs, recorded videos, sounds, and testimonies, Leila Alaoui showcases the stories of those who became collectively displaced from their homes whilst working for an automobile factory in France, and its impact on future generations.  ​

In a time where access to cultural institutions and events returns to virtual spaces, Ekow Eshun’s tour through Rite of Passage encourages viewers to consider those who so often become lost and misrepresented behind waves of news coverage and statistics. Encountering Leila Alaoui’s life-size portraits from their own homes, viewers come face-to-face with the people she met, creating a powerful sense of intimacy. ​

Audiences can also enjoy a special online talk between Ekow Eshun and acclaimed photographer Hassan Hajaj, as they reflect on Rite of Passage and the great sensitivity Leila Alaoui applied to her practice. ​

Leila Alaoui: Rite of Passage will reopen in Somerset House’s Terrace Rooms as soon as government guidance permits. ​

Rite of Passage is the latest exhibition in the Charles Russell Speechlys Terrace Room Series, an ongoing partnership with the leading law firm to present a wide range of free exhibitions reflecting the broad interests of both organisations.​

SOMERSET HOUSE

Strand, London WC2R 1LA

www.somersethouse.org.uk