EUGENE–Award-winning photojournalist Susan Meiselas, best-known for her coverage of hostilities in Central America, will explore the ethical challenges photojournalists face in covering conflict in her talk "Covering War, Crossing Lines, Being Trusted," the 1999 Ruhl Lecture, presented by the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.

Meiselas’ presentation will begin at 4 p.m. Wednesday, May 19, in the Adelaide Church Memorial Reading Room in the Knight Library, 1501 Kincaid St. The lecture is free and open to the public.

"We are particularly pleased that through the Ruhl family endowment we are able to provide a forum for Meiselas to talk about her work and career," says Journalism and Communication Dean Tim Gleason. "Working in the grand tradition of Magnum photographers, Susan Meiselas uses photography to illuminate the human condition and to shine a bright light on injustice.

"She is among the leading photojournalists and documentary photographers of her generation," says Gleason. "We are very fortunate to have her visit the UO to deliver the Ruhl Lecture and to participate in the Savage Conference on "Violence, Suffering, Image" on campus this week."

Meiselas garnered worldwide acclaim for her photographic coverage of the Nicaraguan insurrection in 1979. Later that year, the Overseas Press Club presented her with the Robert Capa Gold Medal for "outstanding coverage and reporting." Her work also resulted in the acclaimed book "Nicaragua: June 1978-July 1979."

Meiselas returned to Nicaragua just before the 10th anniversary of the coup to film "Pictures from a Revolution," which documents the lives behind the faces she captured in her book. She went on to film the story of a Nicaraguan family caught in the strife in "Living at Risk," produced in 1986.

In addition to the Capa Gold Medal, Meiselas in 1982 received the Photojournalist of the Year Award from the American Society of Media Photographers and the Leica Award for Excellence. Meiselas also won the 1994 Hasselblad Foundation Prize for exceptional photographic achievement.

Awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992 and a Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Media Fellowship in 1995, Meiselas used part of the grant funds to complete a 100-year photographic history of the Kurdish people in the book "Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History," published in 1997.

Before joining the New York agency Magnum Photos in 1976, Meiselas held a number of positions in New York and the South, including a stint as an artist-in-residence in South Carolina and Mississippi. She has worked as a freelance photographer since then.

Meiselas’ first major photographic essay, which focuses on the lives of carnival strippers in New England, spawned the book "Carnival Strippers," published in 1976. Aside from her own monographs, Meiselas served as editor to two books documenting the struggles in Central America.

Meiselas has traveled the world with her one-woman and group exhibits. Her work has been collected by museums throughout the United States and Europe.

The Ruhl Symposium is supported by an endowment established by the late Mabel Ruhl of Medford in memory of her husband Robert W. Ruhl, who died in 1967. He was the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and publisher of the Medford Mail Tribune.

Additional support for Meiselas’ visit is provided by the Carlton Raymond and Wilberta Ripley Savage Endowment in International Relations and Peace. The Savage Program Committee is sponsoring a conference on "Violence, Suffering, Image" on May 20—22. Along with the Ruhl Lecture, Meiselas will hold an invitation-only presentation at the conference, whose focus is on violence and suffering represented through the media.

For more information, call Jennifer King, (541) 346-5847.

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