ARCHIVES OF ABUSE | SUSAN MEISELAS
Susan Meiselas joined Magnum Photos agency in 1976 and since then she has worked as a freelance photographer, favoring a documentary approach and focusing on conflicts and civil rights in Latin America.
Archives of Abuse is a series created in collaboration with and commissioned by the San Francisco police in the 1990s, aiming to draw attention to a phenomenon – domestic abuse – which, despite a significant number of cases, lacked visibility at that time. Under a San Francisco city law, these crimes could be prosecuted even without the victim’s complaint, necessitating meticulous research and mapping of the crime scene to gather evidence for trial.
Meiselas’ work began with statistical and archival research on the numbers and types of crimes: parental beatings, domestic violence, abuse, and even homicide – figures that call for awareness and scientific evidence, which Meiselas approaches starting from the evidence. The evidence – words, clothing, broken furniture, household items – collected within homes or hotel rooms, places with a dimension of intimacy: whether the bedroom is in a house or in a hotel is insignificant because they manifest analogous violence, evident in the marks on walls or clothes, and, of course, on bodies.
Archive of Abuse is formalized as a collage, where alongside photographic documentation, the ‘narratives’ – descriptive police reports meticulously detailing the crime scenes, from the condition of the environments to the words written on the walls or floor – are legible: ‘I’m sorry but you have to go to heaven with me.’
Meiselas approaches the project like her previous works, questioning the site of conflict, both physical and relational, which only those who suffer violence – whether direct or towards a family member – truly know well, must face, and find a way to overcome, moving forward physically and psychologically towards another perspective on life. What cannot be overcome are the signs, the traces which Meiselas’ photographs reassemble, layered, narrative, and indelible, ‘landscapes of violence’ from which one can only seek to migrate; as from every scenario of war and crisis that inspires hope and seeks a possibility, however uncertain, of survival, first and foremost to oneself.
The artwork is currently exhibited as part of the Mediations show at Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia, on the occasion of Fotografia Europea 2024, April 26 – June 6, 2024.
More information about the exhibition: link
Susan Meiselas
Collage 1: Police report and police photograph, San Francisco, 1992 from the series Archives of Abuse
C-print, 98.4 x 124.4 cm
Installation view at Fotografia Europea 2024. Mediations, Susan Meiselas, Palazzo Magnani, April 26 – June 9.
© Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos. Photo: outherecollective.
15/05/24