Portrayal and reception, Higher Pictures’ exhibition of Susan Meiselas’ project 44 Irving Street 1970-1971 which runs until July 18th presents the tender relationship between reality and presentation, or how one is captured, how one exists, and the uneasy company between the two. Meiselas photographed 44 Irving Street 1970-1971 for a class assignment during her time at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1971. Seeking company with the other isolated tenants of 44 Irving Street, Meiselas knocked on doors, photographed her co-tenants, and eventually returned with contact sheets, asking for her subjects’ self-perceptions. The series of prints on exhibition offers an insight into the fraught relationship between photographer and subject, especially because Meiselas sought company first and the capture second. Meiselas printed her photographs with an engulfing black abyss spreading to the edges of the print, surrounding the image. Stylistic, yes, and emptying, this black-negative space overwhelms the photographs—maybe suggestive of the inaccurate portrayals or the common feeling of lonely isolation. 44 Irving Street, 1970-1971, is an honest collection that presents the reception and accounts from Meiselas’s sitting subjects, displayed alongside their photographs. To present both the photograph of a subject and the subject’s reception to their image, Meiselas collides with questions and realities of capturing other isolated subjects to find company.

https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/higher-pictures-susan-meiselas-44-irving-street-1970-1971/