NIGARAGUA - Softcover

Meiselas, Susan

4.53

59 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0394739310 ISBN 13: 9780394739311

Publisher: Pantheon, 1981

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Originally published in 1981, Susan Meiselas' Nicaragua is a modern classic--a seminal contribution to the literature of concerned photojournalism. John Berger praised the work for its ability to, "take us right inside a revolutionary moment... Yet unlike most photographs of such material, these refuse all the rhetoric normally associated with such pictures: The rhetoric of violence, revolutionary heroism and the glorification of misery." 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 2008 edition includes Pictures from a Revolution, a DVD in which Meiselas returns to the scenes she originally photographed, tirelessly tracking down the subjects and interviewing them about the reality of post-revolution Nicaragua. The DVD booklet features a new interview with Meiselas in which she discusses the history of the project.
Susan Meiselas, born in Baltimore in 1948, received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and her MA from Harvard University. Her first book, the classic Carnival Strippers, was published in 1976. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Hasselblad Foundation Photography Prize (1994) and the International Center of Photography's Infinity Award (2005). Her work has been exhibited at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. A member of Magnum Photos, Meiselas was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1992. She lives in New York.

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Review:

"In a culture that seemingly suffers from attention deficit disorder, photographer Susan Meiselas stands out for her insistent desire to go back and revisit the people and places she has shot... The Nicaragua project, in particular, demonstrates Meiselas's unusual commitment to return to the places where she has worked and to gain understanding of the impact her photographs have had on the lives of her subjects as well as viewers of her images." --International Herald Tribune

"The book begins relatively serenely, with photos of the impoverished masses contrasted with images of the opulent ruling class: men in flashy white suits at the government place. But as the insurrection progresses, they become increasingly violent; the picked-over remains of a dead body, bloodied children injured in a skirmish, a woman carting her husband's corpse to a safe burial spot." -- Eliza Honey --The New Yorker: The Book Bench

"Some of the photographs (such as a Molotov-tossing rebel) quickly became iconic images of the struggle; others (a 16-year-old widow pushing the body of her dead husband in a wheelbarrow, or a Sandanista playing clarinet to his fellow fighters as they hunker down behind a barricade) endure for their pure expression of humanity in the face of war." -- John Lavine --Color Magazine

"Nicaragua is striking for its almost complete lack of text within the main body of work; the sequence is carefully built to follow a train of events, and the images communicate in simple symbols the complex politics and the state of a nation." -- Jen Allan --The Royal Photographic Society

"The potency and in-your-face intensity of 'Nicaragua' hasn't diminished. It is simultaneously a time capsule of a specific political struggle and a call for citizens of all nations to become more fully engaged with the issues and concerns of our troubled world in the past, present and future." -- Neil Kendricks --The San Diego Union-Tribune

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