susan meiselas nicaragua
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THIS CERTIFIES THAT
MAGNUM SUSAN MEISELAS NICARAGUAPHOTOS, I•CIORPQRAT•D
fl- . BY JOHN BERGER
Parls, 125 Foubourg St. HaoE1i~
Susan Meiselas first traveled to Nicaragua in June 1978. There
she witnessed and documented the last year of the four-decade
Somoza regime, the growth and development of the country's
popular resistance, the insurrection, and finally the overthrow of
Somoza by the Sandinistas in 1979. A decade later, Meiselas
returned to Nicaragua to seek out some of the subjects of her
earlier work-including Somoza's National Guard, guerrilla fighters,
and ordinary citizens-whose lives had been deeply affected by the
outcome of the Contra war and the revolution. On that 1989 trip,
she encountered few whose hopes had been fulfilled. Meiselas's
return journey is chronicled in the film Pictures from a Revolution.
Her book Nicaragua, originally published in 1981, has just been
rereleased by Aperture; the publication is accompanied by the film,
now on DVD.
Here John Berger comments on Meiselas's experience and
accomplishment in Nicaragua.
Susan Meiselas's book about the insurrection and war in
Nicaragua in the 1970s is one of the most moving masterpieces
of war photography. I'm not sure how you measure the truth of
such images. It has something to do with the photographer's
knowledge of what is there. A heartfelt knowledge that goes far
beyond the visible. Her book is packed with such knowledge, and
now, thirty years later, this is poignantly and heroically clearer
than it ever was.
When I recently watched Pictures from a Revolution, the film
about her returning to Nicaragua ten years after she took the
photographs, I kept asking myself who Meiselas, with all her
reticence and discretion, reminded me of?
I couldn't find the answer, and anyway, like each one of us, she's
unique. The next morning an answer came to me. She reminded
me not of another person, but of a sculpture: the only existing
sculpture by the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna. I
looked again at a reproduction I have of it. Yes. It's not a question
of a look-alike (although their physical stances are similar) but of
that mysterious attribute which is a presence. A presence is a
source of energy offered to others. Yes.
Mantegna's statue, made around 1454, is an imaginary portrait
of Saint Euphemia, who lived in the third century A.D. near what is
now the city of Istanbul. Born into a noble, and therefore protected,
family, she was a Christian. Confronted with the Roman persecution
of humble Christians, who were being rounded up, tortured, and
thrown to the lions, she protested and declared: "Take me! Let
me go first to be received by Christ." And the way she declared
this calmed and gave a quiet courage to the others who were
condemned. The Roman consul tried to temporize with her, but
she remained quietly adamant. When she was eventually thrown
into the pit, the wild animals did not attack her, but came together
around her and arranged their tails in such a way that they formed
a hammock for her to lie on. Finally, she was martyred.
The sculptured figure has her right hand in the mouth of a lion
that does not bite it, and in her left hand she holds a tower on a
rock-a place-against her heart. She's defending both a faith and
a place. Among the great artists of the early Renaissance, Mantegna
was the one perhaps most affected by a sense of History and the
lessons of Antiquity. He wanted his figures to offer examples of
human behavior, which would inspire the living in their wager that it
was still possible-despite all the shit-to make life more human.
Her hand in the mouth of a lion, the other holding a place against
her heart, upright, with an unflinching gaze, a camera slung across
her shoulders, an example given and a wager made-all this is
why Susan, although not a saint, made me think of Mantegna's
sculpture. And now vice versa.0
To see the sculpture of Saint Euphemia attributed to Andrea Mantegna, locatedat the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in the town of Irsina, Italy, please goto www.webalice.itlpaolotritto/Eufemia di Calcedonia.html. The statue is onview in the exhibition Mantegna, 1431-1506 at the Musee du Louvre. Paris,September 26, 2008-January 5, 2009.
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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
TITLE: Susan Meiselas: NicaraguaSOURCE: Aperture no193 Wint 2008
The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and itis reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article inviolation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:http://www.aperture.org/