Susan Meiselas and Kristen Lubben in Conversation

Aperture, in collaboration with the Photography Program at Parsons School of Design at the New School, is pleased to present a conversation between artist Susan Meiselas and the director of Magnum Foundation, Kristen Lubben, discussing the book Nicaragua. 

Originally published in 1981, and now in a third edition, Susan Meiselas’s Nicaragua is a contemporary classic—a seminal contribution to the literature of concerned photography. Starting with a powerful and chilling evocation of the Somoza regime during its decline in the late 1970s, the images trace the evolution of the popular resistance that led to the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in 1979. The book includes interviews with various participants in the revolution, along with letters, poems, and statistics. 

In the decades following the original publication, Meiselas has continued to contextualize her photographs and relate them to history as it unfolded. Multiple editions build upon this body of work to evoke and conjure up the reality of people’s lives and aspirations, their victories and disappointments. By extending and deepening her work, Meiselas asks us “to consider not only the specific timeframe of this book, but to think about the broader perspective of history unfolding, and how in the passage of time a photograph of a single moment in a person’s life shifts its meanings as well as our perception of it.”

This program is presented in partnership with The New School. It is free and open to all.

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Susan Meiselas (born in Baltimore, 1948) is a documentary photographer based in New York. She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and her MA in visual education from Harvard University. Her first book, Carnival Strippers, was published in 1976. That year, Meiselas joined Magnum Photos, where she remains a member, and since 2007 has served as president of the Magnum Foundation. Her numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, and the first Women in Motion Award from Kering and Rencontres d’Arles.

Kristen Lubben is a curator, writer, editor, and executive director of the Magnum Foundation.

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Image: Susan Meiselas, Street fighter in Managua, 1978–79; from Susan Meiselas: Nicaragua, June 1978–July 1979 (Aperture, 2025). © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos