Reflecting other worlds
Lauding her visual acuity, John Lithgow ’67 said documentary photographer Susan Meiselas, Ed.M. ’71, has the “soul of a poet.” Amid a montage of Meiselas’ harrowing images, Lithgow conversed with Meiselas inside the New College Theatre on April 29, where she was later presented with the 2011 Harvard Arts Medal as part of the annual Arts First Festival. “With her wide-ranging subject matter, Susan Meiselas is not merely a photographer. She’s a social scientist, an anthropologist, a historian, a correspondent, and one of our greatest storytellers,” said Lithgow. Candid but soft-spoken, Meiselas was still jarred over the recent deaths of two photographers who were killed during fighting in Libya. No stranger to dangerous turf, Meiselas documented insurrection in Nicaragua in the ’70s and traveled to Kurdistan in the ’90s, but her career was formed in Cambridge. “I didn’t have the vision of being a photographer,” recalled Meiselas. But while enrolled at the Harvard Graduate...