THIS CERTIFIES THAT

MAGNUM SUSAN MEISELAS NICARAGUAPHOTOS, I•CIORPQRAT•D

fl- . BY JOHN BERGER

Parls, 125 Foubourg St. HaoE1i~

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

earlier work-including Somoza's National Guard, guerrilla fighters,

and ordinary citizens-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

rereleased by 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

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

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, locatedat the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in the town of Irsina, Italy, please goto www.webalice.itlpaolotritto/Eufemia di Calcedonia.html. The statue is onview in the exhibition Mantegna, 1431-1506 at the Musee du Louvre. Paris,September 26, 2008-January 5, 2009.

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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: Susan Meiselas: NicaraguaSOURCE: Aperture no193 Wint 2008

The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and itis reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article inviolation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:http://www.aperture.org/