[2] In 2006, she was awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship[3] and in 2019 the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize.

[8] After earning her masters degree from Harvard University, Meiselas was an assistant film editor on the Frederick Wiseman documentary Basic Training.

From 1972 to 1974, she worked for New York City public schools, running workshops for teachers and children in the Bronx and designing photography curricula for 4th–6th graders.

[10] She also worked for the State Arts Commissions of South Carolina and Mississippi setting up photography programs in rural schools and served as a consultant to Polaroid and the Center for Understanding Media in New York City.

[11] Her first major photography project documented strippers at New England fairs and carnivals, which she worked on during summers while teaching in the New York City public schools.

Latterly, outside this context, it was reproduced via an Internet meme based on Joy Garnett's 2003 painting Molotov, thus becoming a prominent case-study of the appropriation, transformation, and quotation in art.

[1][19] The project was made in collaboration with Multistory, a local community arts charity, which published a book of the work, A Room of Their Own (2017).