From Sighs and Whispers Podcast:
My latest guest is Meryl Meisler, a wonderful photographer known mostly for her documentary and street work—her adventures at nightclubs like Studio 54, her time as a teacher in a burned-out pre-gentrification Bushwick. In June I went with her to her show at ClampArt and then interviewed her in her home at Penn South, an affordable cooperative housing community in Chelsea. That initial conversation was cut short so a few weeks ago we spoke again, to delve a little deeper.
Meryl’s acclaim as a photographer has come to her later in life. As she discusses in this conversation, she grew up on Long Island in a family of amateur photographers. Shooting the world around her came naturally to her, so she studied photography in the 1970s with Cavalliere Ketchum and Lisette Model. While working as a freelance illustrator, she received a 1978 CETA Artist grant with which she created a portfolio of photographs that explored her Jewish Identity for the American Jewish Congress.