Susan May Tell, visual artist-photographer, believes the eye sees what the heart feels; that is when she clicks the shutter. Her work has been described as haunting, powerful and lyrical – a poet with a camera. In the past two years, her photographs have been exhibited in more than 30 exhibitions, in venues as diverse as Barcelona, New York, and California. The Smithsonian holds her work in its Samuel Wagstaff Collection and Columbia University collected her Oral History and Catalog of Works.
She began photographing in the 1970s, showcasing artistic work in San Francisco and New York galleries. In the late 1980s, she moved to Cairo to cover war and politics for SABA Press Photos. She photographed the Eritrean People's Liberation Front for LIFE Magazine. In 1990 she moved to Paris where her assignments were wine tastings and hot air ballooning. After a decade overseas Tell returned to her hometown, New York, and was hired as a staff photographer and photo editor at The New York Post. There she photographed perp walks, the Good Friday Agreement, and NBA Finals.
At MacDowell in 2015, Tell used the darkroom in Nef Studio to revisit her earliest black-and-white negatives, 1974-1982. The work from this era was the basis for her exhibition "Structured Moments." In 2025, as she focuses on a treasure trove of 8”x10” prints from the 1970s and 1980s found in storage boxes, Tell is organizing a book of the photographs of that era. She also did work to support a project for a poet wanting to use her photographs for their book.
