Meiselas was born in 1949. “The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don't belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation. Susan Meiselas received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.A. in visual education from Harvard University. In the 1970s, while she was teaching photography in New York public schools, she began photographing striptease performers at small carnivals in New England. The series caused a sensation when it was published by Farrar Straus & Giraux in 1976, the same year she joined Magnum. Later, she documented the insurrection in Nicaragua and life during the Pinochet regime in Chile. In 1997 she curated a 100-year history (in photographs) of Kurdistan, and in 2001 her monograph "Pandora's Box" explored an S&M club. Meisleas had one-woman shows in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, Paris, London and Amsterdam. Among many awards and honors, she was named a MacArthur Fellow — the so called Genius Award — in 1992.