Susan Meiselas
Susan Meiselas is an award winning documentary photographer best known for her work in Central America. In 1978, Meiselas received the Robert Capa Gold Medal for "outstanding courage and reporting" for her coverage of the insurrection in Nicaragua that same year. In 1992 she was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Her photographs have been published worldwide in the pages of Time, The New York Times, Paris Match, and Life. She is the author of two monographs: "Carnival Strippers" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976) and "Nicaragua" (Pantheon, 1981). She is the editor of "Learn to See" (Polaroid Foundation, 1975), "El Salvador: Work of 30 Photographers" (Writers & Readers,1983), and "Chile From Within" (W.W. Norton, 1990). Meiselas is a member of Magnum photos and lives in New York City.

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Abigail Heyman
Abigail Heyman became the feminist eye/voice of photography with "Growing Up Female; A Personal Photo-Journal", the landmark book which documented the female experience from a feminist perspective, and challenged assumptions about being a woman. While much of the book is autobiographical in theme, her photographs "transcend the strictly personal and assume public posture." Photographically, as Andy Grundberg said, it "tested the line between reportage and personal expression."

Her book, "Butcher, Baker, Cabinetmaker; Photographs of Women at Work," is about women who hold jobs that children commonly assume are only done by men, and is aimed at changing those expectations for a new generation of school children. "Dreams & Schemes; Love and Marriage in Modern Times" penetrates wedding rituals to examine the underlying emotions and widespread implications they often conceal. Photographs of her own family were the genesis of "Flesh & Blood: Photographers' Images of Their Own Families," an intimate and poignant collection of many contemporary photographers' work, which Ms. Heyman co-edited and produced.

Heyman has participated in solo and group photo exhibitions; her work frequently appears in publications in the United States and abroad. She is a former member of Magnum Photos, and at one time directed the Documentary and Photojournalism Studies Program at the International Center of Photography in New York City.

Jeff Jacobson
Jeff Jacobson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1946. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1968, and from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., in 1971. While practicing as a civil rights lawyer in the American South in the early 70's, Jacobson became interested in photography, shooting in southern jails and rural areas. After completing a workshop at Apeiron with Charles Harbutt, in 1974, Jacobson quit his law practice to devote full energies to photography.

In 1976, Jacobson began working in color while photographing the American presidential campaign. It was during this personal project that he began experimenting with strobe and long exposures, a now familiar technique that he pioneered. Jacobson joined Magnum Photos in 1978, and in 1981 he left Magnum, along with photographers Charles Harbutt, MaryEllen Mark, Burk Uzzle and others to found Archive Pictures. He continued his color explorations in the United States throughout the 80's which culminated in the publication of his monograph, "My Fellow Americans," in 1990. During this time, and continuing to the present, Jacobson regularly does assignments for magazines, such as The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Time, Geo, Stern, Life, and many others.

Jacobson's photographs have been exhibited or are in the collections of museums around the world. He has taught workshops regularly at ICP and other venues in the US & Europe and has been awarded grants from the National Endowment For The Arts, and The New York Foundation For The Arts.

In 1990, Jacobson moved to Los Angeles and began a series of complex, mostly urban landscapes from all over the world which appear as if they were digitally altered, even though all are straight documentary photographs. These photographs raise questions about the influence of the computer upon our notions of photographic reality, and will be published in the book, You Are Here in 1992. In 1999, Jacobson returned to New York where he now lives. He has begun a series of photographs made mostly at night, pushing Kodachrome film as far as possible.

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Alex Webb
Alex Webb was born in San Francisco, California in 1952. He became interested in photography during his high school years. He majored in history and literature at Harvard University and studied photography at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. Webb attended the Apeiron Workshops in 1972; he began working as a professional photojournalist in 1974. His photographs began to appear in such publications as the New York Times Magazine, Life, Geo, and eventually in Stern and National Geographic. Webb joined Magnum Photos as an associate member in 1976, becoming a full memeber in 1979.

During the mid-1970's, Webb conducted reportages in the US south, traveling extensively, documenting small town life in black and white. He also began working in the Caribbean and Mexico. In 1979, Webb began a body of color work that he continues to pursue today. Since then he has traveled throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. He has published four books: Hot Light/Half-Made Worlds (1986) and Under A Grudging Sun (1989), both published by Thames and Hudson and From the Sunshine State and Amazon: From the Floodplains to the Clouds, both published by the Monacelli Press. He has also created a technology-mediated artist's book entitled Dislocations with the Film Study Center at Harvard University (1998-99). A new book about the US/Mexico border is due out fall 2001, also from Monacelli Press.

Webb received a New York Foundation of the Arts Grant in 1986, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1990, a Hasselblad Foundation Grant in 1998, and won the Leopold Godowsky Color Photography Award in 1988 and the Leica Medal of Excellence in 2000. His photographs have been the subject of articles in Art in America and Modern Photography. He has exhibited widely both in the United States and Europe. Among museums that have exhibited his work are: the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the International Center of Photography, the High Museum of Art, the Southeast Museum of Photography, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

To see some of his recent work along the Mexican Border, visit the addresses below.

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