Exhibition Dates: March 29 – April 26, 2008
The gallery is pleased to present the first Canadian solo exhibition by acclaimed photographer Susan Meiselas.
She received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.A. in visual education from Harvard. Meiselas joined Magnum Photos Agency in 1976 and has worked as a freelance photographer since then. Her work has been exhibited and collected around the world and she has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Robert Capa Gold Medal for "outstanding courage and reporting" (in 1978, for her coverage of the insurrection in Nicaragua) and being honoured as a MacArthur Fellow.
This exhibition titled “Intimate Strangers” includes examples from two series which explore the sex industry, each the subject of monographs: Carnival Strippers (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976; Steidl, 2006) and Pandora's Box (Trebruk, 1999).
Beginning in 1972, Meiselas photographed and interviewed the strippers, managers, talkers and audience members for carnival girl shows that traversed the Northeastern United States. Made over a period of three summers, Meiselas provides a comprehensive and gritty black & white document of the women’s plight in relation to the conditions of their working lives.
“The girlie show says a lot about our society. They don't give a goddamn about anybody. These girls—why are they almost abandoned in the first place? They gravitate to carnivals because they're excluded from small, cloistered towns. It's an atavistic need for survival. . .” Patty, former Stripper and Show Manager.
In 1995, Meiselas began photographing an exclusive club in lower Manhattan called Pandora’s Box. This club’s high-end clientele pay money to reverse the power relationships that they otherwise find themselves in. Her colour photographs confront the viewer with the fantasy that consumes this private world.
