Jonas Leddington

Susan Meiselas, the Big Wigs

A group portrait of drag performers seated together in a restaurant booth.

Susan Meiselas, The “Big Wigs” drag queens at Edibles restaurant, Rochester, NY, 2012. Source. Reproduced here for criticism and comment. Rights remain with the photographer or their estate.

Susan Meiselas. USA. Rochester, NY. 2012. The “Big Wigs” drags queens at Edibles restaurant.

I’ve long admired Susan Meiselas, both for her life instinct, living as she seems within situations without relinquishing responsibility for her presence, for an odd omnivorous tenderness (??), and for framing that can be timeless. (Responsibility, presence, tenderness, timelessness.)

Meiselas also speaks pointedly (not cynically) about the (limited) ‘effectiveness’ of documentary photographs and the struggle of the documentary photographer to connect people to people.

Interesting to note, given my previous post on the photo archive and the impulse to return, that Susan returned in 2008 to the subjects of her late 1970s work in Nicaragua.

More to come later on the inevitable Postcards from America project.