In Seeing Silicon Valley, Meehan utilizes photographic portraiture and text to engage viewers with the human side of this mythical American landscape. Produced while Meehan was in residence at Stanford University, in 2017 and 2019, the photographs resulted from a months-long engagement with the people of the Valley who do not make the news, and ultimately question whether or not the hub of American innovation actually functions as a healthy, equitable human community. 

In collaboration with Standord Professor of Communication Fred Turner, Meehan produced “Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America, (University of Chicago Press, 2021), which can be purchased here.

“It is a Silicon Valley rarely described and never shown that photographer Mary Beth Meehan sought to document. . . . Without descending into pathos, she reveals the striking contrasts between the world of start-ups and that in which their employees live. . . . But underneath, Meehan also depicts another, more subtle dissonance – between the way Silicon Valley sees itself, and the way it really is.”

Le Monde