© Susan May Tell. All Rights Reserved.
The eye sees what the heart feels.
BIO:
Susan May Tell is known for her celebrated career in photography—as fine artist, photojournalist and photo editor. Identified by Adorama Pro as a “poet with a camera” she is a highly sought after speaker, portfolio reviewer (including at B&H’s BILD Expo), juror of fine art photography competitions as well as her support of emerging artists.
Tell has been an Artist in Residence at MacDowell (and just received a Fellowship for another one for this fall), Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. The Smithsonian Museum included her work in its Samuel Wagstaff Collection. Columbia University collected her Oral History and Catalog of Works. Solo exhibitions include the Museum of Art/Fort Lauderdale; Griffin Museum of Photography; Capital University; and University of California/San Francisco.
Her work was featured in more than 40 exhibitions since January 2023, domestically and internationally, including The House of Photography in Barcelona. It has been featured in ARTnews, New York Times, L’Oeil de la Photographie and many other influential publications.
Elizabeth Avedon included her work in “fossils of time + light” — a book she curated and designed for the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography. Malcolm Daniel, then Director in Charge, Photography, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, awarded her First Place for an exhibition he juried and curated for the Barrett Art Center.
During Tell’s exciting 25-year career as a photojournalist her clients included pre-eminent American publications such as the LIFE, TIME, Newsweek and the New York Times; her photos also graced their covers. Tell worked a decade overseas, first as the Middle-East photographer for Marcel Saba’s agencies based in Cairo, then as his European photographer based in Paris. After returning to her hometown, Manhattan, she spent a decade as staff photographer and photo editor for the New York Post. Her stories ran the gamut from the Women Fighters of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, Iran-Iraq war, NBA Finals, Egypt’s DEA as well as heads of state, actors, and celebrities.
Inexorably and irresistibly, Tell was drawn back to focusing on personal work.
She is currently working on the odyssey of her FIFTY-TWO years of photographs, creating its archive.
More about Susan and her work can be found at https://www.susanmaytell.co
