Spotlight
Photographer Susan Meiselas shares how ‘44 Irving Street Cambridge, MA’ shaped her career
susan meiselas
Mar 21, 2025
Susan Meiselas didn’t set out to be a photographer. The documentary photographer, filmmaker, and president of the Magnum Foundation was working toward her master’s degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1971 when she shot her groundbreaking “44 Irving Street, Cambridge, MA series,” which is now on view at the Harvard Art Museums.
Best known for her documentary photography of the late 1970s insurrection in Nicaragua and her photos of carnival strippers later that decade, Meiselas looked back on the Irving Street black-and-white prints during a recent gallery talk and shared how they helped shape the career that followed.
Initially, she said, she was focused on her degree when a course in photography “with a sociological bent” caught her eye. (She no longer remembers the name of the course.) For a class project, she chose to shoot the other inhabitants of her Cambridge boarding house.“The camera was this way to connect,” she said. “I knew no one, and I began to knock on doors.”
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Every picture tells a story — Harvard GazettePhotographer Susan Meiselas shares how “44 Irving Street Cambridge, MA” shaped her career.
News.harvard.edu
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