my work and I guess how I live is sort of a combination of marrying my instinct and my intellect. I try not to override my instinct by talking myself out of it. And I think also you have to allow yourself. to embrace the journey that you're about to go through and on and allow the people who you're meeting and coming across to also educate you and take you forth. Hello and welcome to the SheClicks Women in Photography Podcast. I'm Angela Nicholson and I'm the founder of SheClicks, which is a community for female photographers. In these podcasts, I speak to women in the photographic industry to hear about their experiences, what drives them and how they got to where they are now. today I'm speaking with Marissa Roth, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who is known for covering major social and cultural stories and for her long-term project, One Person Crying, Women in War. Marissa now lives in London where she continues to teach, curate and create new work. Hi Marissa, thank you so much for joining me today on the SheClicks Women in Photography podcast. It's really fabulous to have the opportunity to chat with you. Thank you, Angela. I'm absolutely delighted to be here. great. Thank you. Now, you've had a long and varied career, but what first sparked your interest in photography? My mother had an Instamatic camera, which I pretty much appropriated when I was about 11 years old. And we made a trip to Mexico. We lived in LA, so Mexico was our neighbor. And somehow I took photographs on that trip and it just felt quite natural. And I kept taking photographs with her little camera and took photographs of my best friend Tracy. I think when I was like 12, I still have the portrait of her kind of vamping for the camera, very Hollywood. And then in high school, the high school that I went to actually had a very significant sort of arts program and they had a gorgeous dark room. And I was able to take a photography class and my parents kindly bought me a very sturdy Canon FTb-1 camera, which is like bulletproof. And I learned darkroom, processing black and white film. I did a slide show using color film set to music. And so I just loved it. then I, but I was always creative as a kid painting and drawing. So, but the photography I think suited my impatient nature and sort of my love of the world. And then I went to UCLA, a big university in LA, and got a job as a staff photographer on the university newspaper when I was 20. And that, I haven't stopped since. Was there a particular assignment or a story that made you realize this is it? This is what I want to do? Well, I think I was very aware of photojournalism already at a very young age. So I came of age in the 60s and 70s as the Vietnam War was raging, as the civil rights movement was activating in America. And my parents, being European, they were very globally sort of aware. And we had a number of magazines coming into the house every week. So we had National Geographic, Life Magazine, Look Magazine. We had the LA Times newspaper and then we also had the evening news, you know, which was very serious in those days. so I was very aware of photojournalism and completely taken by it. And I mean, I remember being like 10 years old and sitting on this couch under this skylight, just wrapped looking at the photographs. Because the Vietnam War was the last uncensored war that America had. So, you know, the photojournalism was really crucial. And I think it just spoke to me and also National Geographic. So somehow something was percolating. And then also I was very aware of the music during that time, the rock and roll and all the messaging of peace, love and understanding. So somehow it was kind of this amalgamation of activism, awareness. Yeah, so I don't know, photography was like always there. So you had a job in the university newspaper. How did that transition into a career? Well, being Los Angeles, we had access to Hollywood and the music industry. So as an example, uh I photographed Christopher Reeves the day before Superman opened. I mean, we were kind of on that level already, 1920, 21. And I took a photograph of David Lynch also when I was, I think, 21. So, and then we had full rock and roll. So, I was interviewing and photographing bands like Journey, and I can't even remember all of them, and then going to concerts. So it kind of was a wonderful stepping stone straight into bigger newspapers. Umm Took me a few years to get traction and actually my first client was Fairchild Publications, which basically was a conglomerate of like fashion trade publications, although the one I worked for, Women's Wear Daily, was also, you know, very society party driven, society driven. So basically they, you know, I started off working for them and I can't even tell you how many parties I covered and how many Hollywood events I covered. But I learned to be kind of fast on my feet and I was good at it. They kept hiring me. And occasionally the reporter that only wanted to work with me would do serious subjects and do like an interview with Horton Foote. We went to the Jet Propulsion Lab to photograph, my God, now I'm forgetting the name of it, but this space explorer. like a satellite exploration that I literally went to Mars. so, you know, so it was amazing, but, know, I didn't care. I was, you know, a young working photojournalist and making a little money. I could, you know, pay my rent. then I was ambitious and I started knocking on the door at the LA Times and would see the photo editor and he'd say, okay, you know, need a little more hard news. You need a little more of this. And so I'd get a little more of this. and that and you know get the courage up to call him again and you know and again and again and this went on for two years but I always felt in a way he was testing me to really see how committed I was and tenacious which I was both and then I went in and he said okay you start working this weekend and I chose to stay freelance for the newspaper because I didn't want to lose the copyright on my film if I would have been On staff, lose, you know, the paper owns the film. So I sacrificed a 401K and I sacrificed health insurance, but I covered so much Hollywood stuff, which is now... quite an interesting body of work which I can do anything with. But I recognized that early on. So yeah, then I worked for the LA Times as a permanent freelancer for 10 years, covering everything from riots, fires, car crashes, gang shootings, cats stuck in trees. And then on the other side, endless amounts of red carpet, either on the red carpet or I was never a paparazzi. So, you know, Academy, did, I think I did 17 Academy Awards over the years, not just for the LA Times, but the Emmys, the Grammys, the this, the that, parties. So it was quite a wild ride there for like, 25 years. After 10 years, I pivoted to the New York Times and became their lead stringer out of LA. So there again, but there I did more probably less Hollywood and more culture or news, hard news, things like that. So that. really exciting. Lots of fun, especially, like you say, you're starting out in your early 20s. Obviously very savvy from the outset, you know, realizing you wanted to keep your copyright. Yeah, I don't know. I was very aware of things. I I tried to stay on top of things and learn from other photographers or listen to other photographers. Like, I can't even remember how I made that decision. I just knew it was, you know, something that was important. yeah, you know, but, you know, I was learning my trade, my craft, and at the same time, There was a lot of sexism in the world of photojournalists. I always felt like I had to prove myself as a young female photographer to be three times as good as the guys. And a couple photographers on the staff, photographers on the LA Times, who I won't mention names, but they were really rough with me, not physically, you know, trying to sabotage work or put downs or things like that. I don't know, I always had kind of a, I wouldn't say a tough side to me, but a very determined side. So, and yeah. I mean, that's really tough, but I guess if you are able to get through it, you're going to come out the other side a much stronger person, better photographer, if a bit angry. I can't say I was angry, but I was definitely determined to prove I wasn't just some fly-by-night photographer that I was actually really serious. But also, the photographs don't lie. If your picture's on the front page of the paper and it's a good photograph, that speaks volumes. But I was also aware of amazing women photojournalists like Margaret Bourke White and Mary Ellen Mark actually was also a real role model for me. So I knew what was possible. was just, you know, figuring out how to do it. And I had photo editors who were very supportive. in my LA Times photo editor, he was so kind, Jim Wilson. And he always said to me, I knew you'd work for us. He was obviously testing me. But then after like 10 years, he said, I knew you'd be here. So uh he was very quietly non, you know, he didn't show favoritism, but he clearly gave me, you know, an open door. He knew what you had inside basically. Yes, yes he did. I think role models are so important, aren't they? And particularly if there's just a few of them, they can really encourage you. You don't even have to know them personally, but to follow their work and see what they do. It can be so inspiring and reassuring to see what they're up to. I completely agree both from a photographic side, literally the creative side, but also. you know, from the life side as well. You know, now, of course, there's many more women photographers, photojournalists and, know, but yeah, I think I think it's vital because, know, who I mean, I think now who are the role models, whatever your discipline is, whether it's the arts or science or medicine or culture, you know, who do we look up to, you know, to say, wow, they did that. Maybe I can do that. I I was also very aware of the women's movement, even though I was young, and Gloria Steinem and all of that, and the messaging that I took from it as a young woman, you know. going into teenager land and then even going a little bit further, I took the message that you can do and be anything you wanna be. And so that, I took it to heart and just like, okay. And I also grew up in LA, Southern California in a pretty liberal culture. It was sunny, I was surrounded by a lot of very successful type A people. So I never had the sense that things were impossible. was always everything is possible and you just have to make it happen or figure out how to make it happen. yeah, so that and I think it's still my mentality to this day. I think, you know, I just plough through and if I hit, you know, proverbial roadblocks or closed doors, it's like, you know, I lick my wounds for five minutes and then like, okay, right. Who else do I call? Who else do I email? Who else? What other door? or do I not? Yeah, what's next? yeah. Now, although your early career was covering news and fast-paced events, you're perhaps best known for your long form projects, your project that you spent years and years working on. What draws you to those rather than those quicker hit things? Well, I would have to say I didn't set out to create long form projects, if you will. They kind of just happened. The first project actually was my Philippines project. I had gone to the Philippines the first time in 1987 accompanying a medical airlift by a big aid agency. And I had pitched the story to the LA Times because it had an LA hook. The medical airlift was coming out of LA and they had a correspondent based in the Philippines. so I went, you know, the correspondent said, you know, he'd do some stories with me. And so I ended up going and then I ended up falling in love with the correspondent, it was mutual. And so we kind of had this back and forth and then I literally picked up and sort of went there for didn't know how long and with two suitcases and a camera bag and sort of had my year of living dangerously. He was quite a character. His name was Mark Fineman. He's not around anymore, unfortunately, not just in my life, but in general, he died. 24 years ago, we had a heart attack covering the war in Iraq, actually. anyway, so, but I, you we were doing a lot of news stories and feature stories. And then I was also being sent by the LA Times to Japan to work with some of their correspondents there. So it was quite an amazing experience. And then actually it was during one of the trips we went to Pakistan to do a feature story on Karachi. And then when we finished, he had to go back to Manila, but I was sort of young and hungry and wanted to do more stories and met with a woman named Kathy Gannon, who was then the head of the Associated Press based in Islamabad. And we were batting around story ideas and she said, oh, there's a story. that no one cares about. And at that time it was at the end of the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan and the 10 year war. And she said there's about a half, there's about a hundred million Afghan war widows, many of whom were living in refugee camps in Pakistan. And I thought, well, I care. And I literally, I don't even know how I did it. I tagged along with the French journalist and we went down to one of these camps. And then I made it into the other, another camp in Peshawar. And as a woman, I didn't have a translator, I didn't have a guide, was just sort of, Pakistan was a lot less sort of dicey back then. And as I was working during that week, I felt like something was... happening to me. It was like I was working on a level that I'd always hoped to be working on creatively, intellectually, almost spiritually and emotionally. And came away from that. We went back to Manila, processed the film, sent the pictures into the paper, and they ended up redispatching Mark to go back to Pakistan to report the story. And it broke as a page one story, and it really broke the story for the first time. And so something changed in me at that point. And I really consider that to be like the almost the inception point, really the cornerstone images for the Women in War project. So coming back to your question, I kept going back to the Philippines. Of course, the relationship had to blow up. But I realized I had the beginnings of what I wanted to do a book project. going back and then finally found a publisher and so the book was published 10 years after that first trip. So I didn't set out to spend starting to do a 10-year project. Just like with the Women in War project, I didn't start out to do a 40-year photo project. It just kind of took hold of me and but something was activated and then I didn't do another subject related to women, the women's side of war. until another 10 years later when I went to Albania to cover refugees during the war in Kosovo. But it was like, I actually had hoped to do the project in like five years. I thought, okay, you know, I'll get grant money and try to finish it in five years. again, I can't. really say how it all happened. It was just like I knew I had to do this project. And I kept hoping it was done, you know, over the years because it gripped me and it was hard. A lot of it was quite emotionally charged. But now looking back, I realize part of the deep sort of motivation, which I didn't even understand probably for 20 years, was my own family. We have a pretty horrible war history, Holocaust history, World War II history. I think, and my parents never spoke about anything. And I think in my own way, I needed to come to terms with it, find out more information. And I think this also gave me kind of a... It gave me a purpose, but it also gave me a community, you know, meeting these women, hearing their stories. And somehow it was a way of finding my own peace within myself. But coming back to your question again, It just happened. I think with the Philippine project, I realized I have the capacity to finish a project. think finishing a project is a real hard piece of it. A lot of people start projects. or they get midway, which is usually the slogging part. The beginning and the end kind of have all the energy, but the middle has the slog. But finishing it is the challenge. So you worked on One Person Crying for 40 years. And that was about how women are affected by war. I mean, that's a long slog in your own words. Did that, did your desire to concentrate on that, you know, to build that as a project, did that stop you working on other things? No, it didn't. if anything, two projects sort of came in that probably saved me psychologically and emotionally. So I decided to go to Tibet for my 50th birthday. I'd always wanted to go there. And I was with my second ex-husband at that point, Nigel. It was English, we're still on good terms. And it was an extraordinary trip. I took a hundred rolls of Kodachrome film on the first trip. And I loved Tibet, but it was deeper than love. It was like, felt like I was at home in my heart in a way. I tell people, I did a second trip as well and I tell people I would have been quite peaceful to die in either of those trips. It was that kind of... all encompassing. just felt like held there in the most tranquil, spiritual way. And I'm not a practicing Buddhist, but something. And the photographs were just, I don't know, they just, it was like I was familiar with the feeling of it or the sense of the Tibetan Buddhism. And after the first trip, or actually our marriage sort of quietly came apart right after the first trip, I think something happened to me in Tibet and I just couldn't fight anymore. And I was just like, I became very like, okay, I'm just gonna let go of this, go home. Let's go back to London. And then it took a few more years to get back to Tibet. I went with a friend and I kept going with, by then I felt like I'd had this photo. what I called a photographic meditation. And yeah, so after the second trip was when I sequenced the images and then found a publisher and did it. So that project was a massive turning point. And I realized this wasn't about... war or my own family's traumas and war histories, that this was a personal experience and it was a personal, very deep creative experience as well as it was spiritual. And after the Tibet project came out, I just had this idea to do what I call a crossing. So my parents met and fell in love on the original Queen Mary coming to America right before the onset of World War II. They lost each other at Ellis Island and literally by chance bumped into each other in Times Square five years later, very Hollywood. My mother actually was a theater actress in Budapest. This was like straight out of, it could have been Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who turned out to be his wife, but Ingrid Bergman in another incarnation. Anyway, I wanted to, but I was still sort of roiling with family and... memory and identity and all of that. And I decided to do a transatlantic crossing, although albeit it was the other direction, but I wanted to experience what my parents experienced on the Atlantic Ocean. So the first crossing was very emotional. I just thought of them. And at the same time, I took another hundred rolls of film and I discovered that I loved being on the ocean and I loved photographing the ocean. And that led to six more crossings over four more years. But I would say that probably a friend of mine at the conclusion of it, she was so sweet, my friend Francoise, who's also gone, but she said, you went out to sea Marissa. S-E-A, maybe S-E-E, but it was really that project that I think was the true, almost catharsis and kind of the counterbalance to the heaviness of the Women in War project. So I recognize, you know, on some level I recognized that I needed to pull myself forward and I still kept hoping the Women in War project was done. You know, I would like try to... know, park, you know, really deliberate endpoints, but they were never, they weren't organic. They weren't like a natural conclusion. So then I just kept going. And then since I've lived here, of course, with the war in Ukraine, and knowing how, you know, the homes for Ukraine scheme here and how many Ukrainian women are here. So then I decided to do this project here. That was 2024. And then there was a story that I'd always wanted to do, which was about the Channel Islands. A lot of people in Britain don't even know about the occupation of the Channel Islands by Germany during World War II. So that was a story that had already been percolating sort of in the back of my mind. And then I thought, I'm here. so that, and then after I did that, then I thought, okay, now it's peaceful. There's really no more. I mean, I could do more. but I feel it's concluded. I feel my journey through this is concluded. I am aiming to do a documentary feature film that sort of riffs on the Women in War project that will take me to four or five new countries. But with that, I want to primarily focus on women who became activists. So either activists during a conflict, in cross-community sort of keeping it together or human rights activists, you know, afterward, things like that. So anyway, sorry, this is really a long, long piece. We want the long stories. So when I saw you speak at the Royal Geographical Society relatively recently and you said then that you thought One Person Crying was finished, but it sounds like it isn't. Well, I would say in my mind and sort of heart and soul, I would say that the main bulk of the photography, maybe doing it by myself is done. I would say phase one, which is 40 years is done. I see the documentary almost as the capstone. Okay. And so there's still a few countries I'd like to go to, like Rwanda, El Salvador, Sri Lanka. But once I do that, hopefully soon, I'm searching for a producer. Then I'm ready to be quiet and sort of pass the torch. I think with all of my projects, I've been very certain about the conclusions to kind of know when I don't really feel that I have more to say or whatever my journey through that subject is complete. Yeah, I never really waffle on that. It just feels like I've moved down the river of my life to a certain point and I'm ready to carry forth. Yeah, well, it's probably a good point to ask you then, what advice would you give to other female photographers who want to explore difficult subjects and they worry about access or safety? Well, I think access and safety even more now because everybody knows what you're doing immediately. I think... It's vital. Like when I was in Pakistan, as an example, I bought a Shawwal Kameez outfit, you know, which is very baggy, tunic pants, a very baggy tunic. I put a scarf over my head. I was afraid of being raped actually. so, and I think I try to respect the local environment, but also, you know, you always have to be on guard. And my advice to other photographers or even people who were traveling is if something feels weird, it probably is. And don't try to talk yourself out of it. I think for me, my work and I guess how I live is sort of a combination of marrying my instinct and my intellect. I try not to override my instinct by talking myself out of it. And I think also you have to allow yourself. to embrace the journey that you're about to go through and on and allow the people who you're meeting and coming across to also educate you and take you forth. I find now, I teach as well, and I find now my students are much more prone to trying to define sort of a linear path to doing a work or a project. and It doesn't happen that way. I mean, unless you're on a specific deadline or you're working for a publication and you have a deadline, then you really have to put it together within a certain timeframe. But if it's a project that's more open-ended, I think half of the time with my work, it's been about discovery. It's been about allowing somebody who crosses my path or an experience to carry me forth. And I might go down a side road or the proverbial side road that takes me someplace else. Also, a lot of it is self-discovery. I mean, didn't really, I I started off, you know, the Women in War project as a photojournalist and then I pivoted probably to being defined as a documentary photographer. And my motivation probably for the first 10, 15 years was, in that mindset, okay, I'm gonna do this project because I think it's an under-reported perspective on war, the women's perspective on war. And then gradually as I matured, I realized, well, hang on, this is also. running into personal territory. And it's, you know, I'm excavating history about, you know, my own family's terrible war history and understanding too that there was trauma that has been passed down through generations. So uh this informed my choices of subject matter further along even. So my advice would be also I knew I didn't want to cover an active war zone. That's where, you know, I had covered terrible events in LA, know, car crashes and riots. And I did, you know, I did my job, but, you know, I'm still haunted and traumatized by some of those events. And I was, you know, I was young and I was still trying to compete, but I realized everyone has a threshold. And I knew my threshold was I didn't want to witness the horrors of war. I didn't want to. put myself through it because there I didn't know if I, I didn't want to live with that, so to speak. So I understood my threshold. And so that was a tough decision because, you know, again, I wanted to be better than the guys. I wanted to make a difference. And in the end, the Women in War Project took me to some of the former war zones where I may have gone to like Bosnia. And so was able to tell the stories that meant more to me in terms of the women who I met, Adina Kotic, sustained. She was put into like almost like a hotel and basically raped for three weeks by Serbian soldiers. And she was one of the first Bosnian Muslim women to actually testify at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Extraordinary woman. And so... that's the story I've ended up telling, which for me is an important enduring story and talking about role models. I mean, she was unbelievably courageous. So in the end, my choice, which was hard, turned out to be something even more meaningful. So I think don't just... My advice in one sentence would be don't just live in your head and ideas, you know, remember you have a heart and a soul and a body attached and you are vulnerable even if you don't want to admit to it. And the consequences are long term. You know, they live with you. You know, I'm still haunted by images. So, you know, it's just be mindful of really who you are internally and not just in the idea of it. So that would be my advice. I mean, that's an interesting perspective because whilst you've avoided active war zones and that physical danger through your images, the people you photograph, you form a connection with them and you get to know their stories, which must be every bit as traumatic as seeing someone being injured and photographing that. Yeah, it's hard. I probably have trauma-acquired PTSD. But again, I always felt that I wanted to hear these stories and document them. And so I come really from, I guess, as a historian or documentarian, because I think it's important that these stories are told and remembered. And it was interesting because I also started sharing my own family story about a massacre that took my paternal grandmother. I mean, I'd never even spoken her name. you know, forever. mean, my father never talked about her ever. so by speaking about her specifically, she's come to inhabit me. Apparently, I'm very much like her personality. My father didn't tell me that, but his older brother told me after my father died that I was very much like her and kind of fierce, determined. So I think this project has also given my life purpose and I am so grateful. I mean, I was really blessed to be born where I was born in LA. to have all of the opportunities that I had, incredible education, again, a spirit of everything is possible. And I was blessed with talent and moxie and determination. And so those aren't attributes that I would readily not use. uh to full bore, if you will. I realized I've been really fortunate. But yeah, I mean, have a mentality of documenting history for the future. mean, think, so that's been partially, and whatever traumas I have. It's, you know, it's just, it is what it is. I already came with a baseline of trauma just from my family. But in a way, honestly, Angela, I would say that, you know, I'm more peaceful now. I don't have kind of this hole in my heart that I always had forever. It's gone. And so somehow through this war project, you know, I've come to a place of peace within myself. Oh, that's good. That's good to know. OK, well, let's go to six of some SheClicks. I've got 10 questions from SheClickers, and I would like you to answer six of them, please, by picking numbers from one to 10. So could I have your first number, please? eight. Would you say you have a passion against injustice that drives your documentary work? That question is from Helen. Thank you, Helen. Yes, would say, uh I don't know that I would use the word injustice, but I definitely have a passion for raising awareness, raising the topic of consequences. I think a lot of perpetrators of wars, don't think about the consequences for themselves. I mean, a lot of men actually suffer as well during war, but it's not always acknowledged. And so for me, it's more to say I... want you to look at this subject. I want you to hear these voices. So yeah, I think it would be a passion and determination. But again, I don't believe in hitting people over the head with a sledgehammer to get their attention. My way is to present a face, a story, an artifact. A lot of the subjects that I... I did a lot of like ancillary images of, you know, where I'd gone to war zones. It's not, I don't consider it to be a portrait series. So I also wanted to show the land. You know, there's in Bosnia, there was a former grave site that had a cornfield growing on it. former mass grave site. And so that was an important photograph for me to make. That just tells a piece of the story, which is vital to like the Srebrenica massacre and the history of the war. again, I try not to put everything into black and white terms, but yes, this is my, I suppose at heart, this is my anti-war statement. Okay, could I have your second number please? three. What's the most valuable piece of advice you received in connection with your work? That question is from Liz. Hi Liz, the most valuable piece of advice. Well, I think it came from one of my professors at UCLA as I was graduating. At that time, I was a staff photographer on the university newspaper. I was getting my degree in bachelor of art degree in graphic design. And I love to write at the same time. And I went to him and I said, I don't know what to do. And he said, and he was wonderful. His name was Mits Kataoka. He was an architect and the head of the art department. And he said, you can't sit on three chairs at one time. He said, pick one road, go down it, see if it's working for you. And if it's not, stop and take the next road. So I thought, good advice. I thought, okay. So my parents put me through school. I got my degree in graphic design. So I got a job in a little graphic design firm where they wouldn't even let me put pencil to paper. And I was just miserable. It was a little office and I was stuck there all day. And I was miserable. And I lasted nine months and quit. I was still, wasn't making enough money to even move out of the house yet. And then I put together my photo portfolio from my university photo assignments and started knocking on doors and finally got work. And that was the road that became my road. But then I even still was so like focused. I had taken Mits Kataoka's advice to heart. I didn't really even start doing my own sort of writing or prose, probably for another 20 years. So again, his advice was to focus on one thing, master that, and then go laterally. So that was the greatest piece of advice I got. I really like that analogy. You can't sit on three stools or three chairs at the same time. That makes great sense. fantastic. Okay, your third number, please. One. if you could have a dinner party and could invite any female photographer of any time in history, who would you invite and why? And that question's from Penny. Thanks, Penny. I think there's two photographers who I would love to invite from different generations. One would be Julia Margaret Cameron, who for me embodies the spirit of photography. It was her hobby, taking photographs, but I loved her... how natural her photographs were, how it appeared her subjects trusted her. But she also had such a lyrical light touch, if you will, but at the same time, the images came away with very deep meaning. The other photographer would be Mary Ellen Mark. ah I was aware of her photography. since the get-go when I started off. And I think she, for me, embodied vision and courage. I didn't understand how she could do some of the work that she did. Like she spent three months in the brothels in Calcutta. and basically photographing. And she somehow gained their trust after having been practically spit on or attacked or food thrown at her. It took her like a month just to gain their trust. And then she came away from that without judging her subject. It was just pure and... She came to know a lot of the prostitutes, some of them were transvestites. And so I was awed by her ability to kind of transcend her own being, if you will, and just trusted. trusted her journey through that. she'd found out about, it's called Falkland Road. She'd found out about it 10 years before on a trip to India and she never stopped thinking about it. And then 10 years later, she pitched the story to, I think it was Geo magazine. And in those years, they were really fat financially. And so they underwrote her three month trip and then published the photos. So there again, was a, uh for me, it was a lesson. and determination, know, that something embedded in her and she just didn't let go of it. And so I think she's an incredible and became an incredible photographer. She's gone now. She didn't get a super long life. I think she passed away at the age of 75. But anyway, yeah, so that would be a pretty cool dinner party. I think it would. Yeah. I might, I might add Lee Miller to that because I think she'd make some great drinks. And there'd be some fabulous stories. Yeah, I would I would add her to Yeah, she was she was extraordinary. Okay, so could I have your fourth number please? Four Number four, in your Witness to Truth project was there anyone in particular who stood out to you? That question's from Marie-Ange. I ended up becoming friends with two of the survivors. Kathy Weiss was one of them. And, she actually came from the same small city in what is now Romania that, my great grandmother came from. And I always felt like maybe Kathy. and I were related to each other. she had an extraordinary story, terrifying. She was in Auschwitz. And regularly, she was a teenager. I think she was only 14 in Auschwitz. And... They would regularly parade 10 or 15 young women in front of Dr. Goebbels, who was considered the doctor of death, who was known to perform horrifying experiments on young women and twins. so the young women knew that if they looked sickly, he would choose them and said the girls would all stand there and they pinch their cheeks to make them look rosy. And she told the story of Dr. Gribbles coming straight to face-to-face with her and that he looked her in the eye and then passed on to the next girl. So I always thought, you know, I'm looking into the same eyes that this horrifying human being looked into. And she had the most, there's a portrait of her in my Women in War section. I photographed her a second time, one more informally for the Women in War project, and then one more formally for the Holocaust, the Witness to Truth project. So she was just the kindest, warmest woman. And then the other one was Ava Brown. who was also Hungarian. And so we just kind of fell in love with each other when we first met. She was quite a character, very sparky, loved to tell her story, probably told her story to 20,000 school kids at the Museum of Tolerance over 30 years. So yeah, those two are still in my heart. Ava's gone, Kathy's still hanging on. Well, when you're talking about Cathy looking into Goebbels' eyes, my heart started pounding. I can only imagine what hers was like. That must have been such a horrendous moment. Yeah. Wow. yeah. And she survived, which and she survived psychologically too. You know, so she survived the horrors of a concentration camp, but she also survived, you know, came to America, built a life, built a family, and she could still smile and laugh. That's good to know. Okay, could I have your fifth number, please? Number 10. Are there any women from a particular conflict whose stories you never had the opportunity to tell for whatever reason? And if you had the chance to speak to them and photograph them, who would you revisit? That question's from Louise. Thanks, Louise. Yeah, there's still some stories I'd like to do. I hope to go to Rwanda, Sri Lanka, and El Salvador for my documentary. Again, it's to tell stories that I feel are important from an activist standpoint. Rwanda had a terrible genocide in 1991 over four months. I don't know how many, like 1.2 million people were killed between the Hutus and the Tutsis. we hear a lot of the rapes and the rape babies. There was a systematic campaign of rape to kind of shame. one side and to dilute the culture. But a lesser known story is that after the genocide, about 70 % of the men had either been killed or fled. And then it was up to the women to pick up the pieces. And the women not only picked up the pieces, but they started making micro loans to other women to rebuild the economy. And then there was a tradition in Rwanda for elderly men to be sort of was called the Gacaca Council, which is like little village elders who would meet out justice or they would, if there was a conflict or there was a confrontation, they would be the ones to... you know, come up with either punishment or resolution. And so the women basically had to step in to all of these roles. And so the women became judges. And now, I mean, it's still not a perfect culture. It's a quasi almost dictatorship there, but about 35% of the judges and on their Supreme Court are now women. And there has not been any sort of reigniting of the conflict. So that's one story that is of interest to me. And so also in El Salvador in the 70s and 80s, there was a lot of killings and a lot of young people just vanished and their remains have never been found. And the governments, subsequent governments have never allowed for any information to come forth. And so a lot of the mothers of these then young people are still advocating for, you know, human rights and to find out. So I'd like to meet some of these mothers. I mean, talk about being courageous for 30, 40 years, you know, trying to, trying to, to, to, to, find justice and for them some peace, peace of mind. So yeah, those are two subjects I'd like to uh address. Yeah, they both sound very interesting. Okay, can I have your last number, please? Five. Several people asked this question, which of your projects has affected you the most? I would have to say that's, I mean, I'll have to answer that question in two parts because say, let's say like the Women in War project has affected me, well, profoundly. Again, it became a journey of... both storytelling, documenting, but also a journey into my own sort of family's war history and probably my own heart, if you will. So that's profound. But I would say the Tibet project affected me in a completely different way, almost an opposite way. It was about light and beauty. And it really felt like a turning point in terms of even a deeper sense of creative expression. I kind of really let myself go, if you will, allowed myself to be more fluid, creatively. And that's not to say that it's not also a statement as an activist, you know, for what's been happening to the Tibetan culture. But on that trip, those trips, I chose not to embrace that kind of more sense of, you this is a culture that's being diluted. So my way was to say, this is what it looks like, this is what it feels like, this is the beauty of it. This is how profound it is, and this is what is potentially going to be lost. So, yeah. So I guess both projects are really about, in a way, documentation, memory. identity and response. Maybe they're the two halves of myself, my own war inheritance, if you will, and then my own quest for kind of inner peace and a kind of solace. Yeah. yeah. Fantastic. Well, Marisa, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. It's been absolutely fantastic speaking with you. Well, thank you, Angela. This was really wonderful. your questions were very thoughtful and thought provoking. And those of your listeners, I really appreciate it. So thank you for having me. Thank you. Well, thank you for answering them so fully. Okay, bye bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of the She Clicks Women in Photography podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Special thanks to everybody who sent in a question. You'll find links to Marissa's website and social media channels in the show notes. I'll be back with another episode soon, so please subscribe to the show and tell all your friends and followers about it.