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PHOTOS, ICIORPQRATD
SUSAN MEISELAS NICARAGUA
. BY JOHN BERGER
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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 earlierwork-including Somoza's National Guard, guerrillafighters, and ordinarycitizens-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 rereleasedby 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
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, located at the Cathedralof Santa Maria Assunta in the town of Irsina, Italy, please go to www.webalice.itlpaolotritto/Eufemia di Calcedonia.html. The statue is on view in the exhibition Mantegna, 1431-1506 at the Musee du Louvre. Paris, September 26, 2008-January5, 2009.
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
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TITLE: Susan Meiselas: Nicaragua SOURCE: Aperture no193 Wint 2008 The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher: http://www.aperture.org/
