Episode 19: Susan Meiselas and Wendy Ewald

In this episode, MoCP Curator of Academic Programs and Collections, Kristin Taylor, chats with Susan Meiselas and Wendy Ewald about their new publication titled Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography. Made with Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Leigh Raiford, and Laura Wexler, the book is a deep dive into current and historical photographic projects about human stories. It spotlights how the person depicted is often left out of the history as a co-maker of the images and asks us to imagine a way forward from coercive photographic practices.

Wendy Ewald received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012. She was a senior research associate at Duke University and artist in residence at Amherst College for many years. She has authored or contributed to several books, including "Portraits and Dreams: Photographs and Stories by Children of the Appalachians" and "Secret Games: Collaborative Works with Children 1969-1999."

Susan Meiselas received a MacArthur Fellow in 1992, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2019. Her work has been widely featured in news publications and museums alike, and she has been the president of the Magnum Foundation since 2007, whose mission to expand diversity and creativity in documentary photography and Susan has been a member of this organization since 1980. Some of her publications include "Carnival Strippers" (1976), "Nicaragua: June 1978-July 1979" and "Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History" (1997).

To see works in the MoCP permanent collection by artists presented in the book or discussed this episode, please go here.