“Domestic violence, flight, refuge – these are not the conditions that fit the event of family photography or its afterlife. Indeed, ‘A Room of Their Own’ shows family and family life to be the very sites of violence that these women had to flee, sites we see so clearly reflected in ‘Archives of Abuse.’ But while these latter are compiled by the police, Meiselas focuses on the women themselves, showing us how they construct their own shelter, outside the times and spaces of a threatening domesticity. While police photographers shine the flashlight on bloodied sheets and injured faces, Meiselas makes sure not to intrude, protecting her subjects even from her own camera gaze. And she protects them from the familial gaze that positions them as subjects of familial violence.”
—Susan Meiselas: Mediations, 2018, "Pausing" by Marianne Hirsch