W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #susanmeiselas, #nicaragua

This is an impossible picture by Susan Meiselas.  Impossible because it bears witness to crossing some imagined line about ethics and morality.   Meiselas is one of the most important figures in contemporary photography because of here indomitable investigation of the power of photography as a photographer, historian, and an activist.

This image sneaks up on you.  Initially the viewer — witness — takes in the lush green landscape of a countryside, possibly tropical, adjacent to a body of water.  Horizontal planes take the eye in and down then abruptly back to the foreground.  It takes a moment to put it together: pants, legs, a spine, other body parts. Horror or horrors, it is human remains, left to the elements.

Here is her account,, “I used to get in the car as early in the morning as I could and drive, looking for things that seemed unusual. One day I was driving on the outskirts of Managua when I smelled something. It was a very steep hill, and as I got closer to the top, the odor overwhelmed me. I looked out and saw a body and stopped to photograph it. I don't know how long it had been there, but long enough for the vultures to have eaten half of it. I shot two frames, I think, one in color and one in black and white, then got out. The images I made of the body were powerful partly because of the contrast with the landscape's beauty. [It’s hard for] the American public [to] relate their reality to this image. They could not account for what they saw.”*1

Photography can take us to places and provide us with evidence that we can process.  Sometimes the information seems seems too much but people are complicated.  We do look.  We may have range of responses, ranging from a refusal to look further to a sense of a call to action.  That is the “power of photography”.

*1“Exposure 21,” No.1 (1988)

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