Susan Meiselas is announced as the recipient of the prestigious Outstanding Contribution to Photography of the Sony World Photography Awards 2025, in recognition of her impact on the medium over the past five decades. Celebrated for her deeply engaged approach, Meiselas has created a powerful corpus of work, expanding perceptions of documentary photography through her insightful portrayals of people in their communities. Meiselas is well known for depicting the stories of women: from girls growing up in Little Italy, New York; to strippers performing in state fairs; to women escaping domestic violence in the UK; and for her work documenting human rights issues in Latin America, as well as compiling a photographic history of Kurdistan. Her photographic essays, rooted in place, share the lives and experiences of those in front of her lens. Taken over extended periods—often accompanied by field notes and participant testimonies—Meiselas’ projects invite collaboration.
Excerpts of five projects by Meiselas will be on view at London’s Somerset House (17 April – 5 May 2025), including projects never exhibited before in the UK. Drawing from her earliest bodies of work, 44 Irving Street, Prince Street Girls, and Carnival Strippers, to her later projects Pandora’s Box and A Room of Their Own, the exhibition traces recurring thematic elements Meiselas has cultivated in her practice, focusing on what is often hidden from public view.
The series presented at Somerset House chronicles the interpersonal relationships and her exchanges over time. In 44 Irving Street (1971), Meiselas invited neighbours in her boarding house to write about the differences they found between how they saw themselves and what was revealed in the portraits that she made of them. Prince Street Girls (1975 – 1990), records the dynamics of a group of young girls growing up in Little Italy, tracing their evolution to adulthood.
Carnival Strippers (1972-75) documents the onstage and offstage experiences of women doing striptease at small-town carnivals across New England, capturing both their performative and private lives, counter-balanced with a collage of voices of all the participants, from the girl show manager to the women on stage and the men in the audience. The immersive projection, Pandora’s Box (1995), focuses on a New York City S&M club known as ‘a Disneyland of Domination.’ In A Room of Their Own (2015-2017), Meiselas turns her lens towards a women’s refuge in the Black Country, UK. She combines photographs of residents’ rooms with testimonies and original artworks generated by survivors that both express and protect their identities.
Born in Baltimore, USA, in 1948, Susan Meiselas completed her MA in visual education at Harvard University before working as a teacher. She began photographing during school summer breaks, creating her first project, Carnival Strippers, in the summers of 1972-75. She joined Magnum Photos in 1976 and has gone on to produce several significant bodies of work. Her photographs of the revolution in Nicaragua in the late 1970s still remain vivid in the public imagination years later.
Commenting on her acceptance of the award, Susan Meiselas says, ‘I am honoured to receive this Award for my contribution to the ever-expanding world of photography. Over the past 50 years, I have had the privilege of witnessing history being made, sharing the often unseen lives of those engaged in its making. The work on display invites reflection not only on the photographs themselves but also on the relationships that shaped and inspired them.‘
The Outstanding Contribution to Photography honours the voices behind the most groundbreaking photographic work of our time. As its 18th recipient, Susan Meiselas joins a distinguished list of names including Mary Ellen Mark (2014), Martin Parr (2017), Graciela Iturbide (2021), Edward Burtynsky (2022), and Sebastião Salgado (2024).
Meiselas will be presented with her Award at the annual gala ceremony in London on 16 April 2025, during an evening of celebrations for the overall winners of the Sony World Photography Awards 2025. For more information about upcoming announcements and winners, please visit www.worldphoto.org.
