The Artist Upending Photography’s Brutal Racial Legacy
Deana Lawson’s regal, loving, unburdened photographs imagine a world in which Black people are free from the distortions of history.
Deana Lawson’s regal, loving, unburdened photographs imagine a world in which Black people are free from the distortions of history.
Jenna Wortham New York Times Magazine May 2021 30min Permalink
In 2019, I made a painful decision. But to the algorithms that drive Facebook, Pinterest, and a million other apps, I’m forever getting married.
Lauren Goode Wired Apr 2021 25min Permalink
A childhood poster catalyzes complex doubts about a marriage.
Weike Wang Gulf Coast Magazine Mar 2020 15min Permalink
The story behind an Instagram sensation is the story of a changing coastal Maine.
Brian Kevin Down East Dec 2019 20min Permalink
Thomas Joshua Cooper risks his life to document the world’s remotest places.
Dana Goodyear New Yorker Oct 2019 30min Permalink
A profile of photographer William Christenberry.
Michael Adno The Bitter Southerner Feb 2019 35min Permalink
An argument on the meaning of Cubism settled.
Lawrence Weschler The Believer Nov 2008 Permalink
On photographer Garry Winogrand and the unedited archive of more than half a million exposures he left behind.
Jacob Mikanowski The Awl Jun 2013 15min Permalink
On William Eggleston’s The Red Ceiling and an unsolved murder.
Will Stephenson Oxford American Mar 2018 20min Permalink
Steidl, who is sixty-six, is known for fanatical attention to detail, for superlative craftsmanship, and for embracing the best that technology has to offer. "He is so much better than anyone,” William Eggleston, the American color photographer, told me, when I met him recently in New York. Steidl has published Eggleston for a decade; two years ago, he produced an expanded, ten-volume, boxed edition of “The Democratic Forest,” the artist’s monumental 1989 work. Eggleston passed his hand through the air, in a stroking gesture. “Feel the pages of the books,” he said. “The ink is in relief. It is that thick.”
Rebecca Mead New Yorker May 2017 30min Permalink
On the photographer Catherine Opie who has “made a study of the freeways of Los Angeles, lesbian families, surfers, Tea Party gatherings, America’s national parks, the houses of Beverly Hills, teen-age football players, the personal effects of Elizabeth Taylor, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, Boy Scouts, her friends, mini-malls, and tree stumps.”
Ariel Levy New Yorker Mar 2017 25min Permalink
The writer investigates her late husband Ted Streshinsky, whose photographs documented the 1960s, and J. Edgar Hoover’s attempts to label him a Soviet spy.
Shirley Streshinsky The American Scholar Jun 2016 25min Permalink
“The main characteristic of Diane was courage.”
A profile of photographer Bill Cunningham.
Lauren Collins New Yorker Mar 2009 15min Permalink
Chris Earnshaw began taking photographs of Washington, D.C. more than 40 years ago. By the time he paid a visit to a museum to tout his work, he had in his possession—in plastic bags and filing drawers—3,000 Polaroids of a city long gone.
Dan Zak Washington Post Jan 2016 40min Permalink
A photographer captured the moment when a race organizer confronted a woman who’d snuck into the race.
David Davis Deadspin Apr 2015 10min Permalink
Mark Hogancamp nearly died after being jumped by five men in 2000. After waking from a coma with no memories, he developed an extraordinary coping device: he built a miniature town in his garden where he gets his revenge.
Jon Ronson The Guardian Oct 2015 10min Permalink
Practicing photography in Switzerland.
Teju Cole New York Times Magazine Sep 2015 20min Permalink
A profile of photographer Robert Frank in his 90th year.
Nicholas Dawidoff New York Times Magazine Jul 2015 25min Permalink
In 1992, a magazine story introduced the world to the photographs of Sally Mann. Here, she responds to the firestorm that article produced.
Sally Mann New York Times Magazine Apr 2015 20min Permalink
On a book of photographs shot by Leni Riefenstahl in the 1950s and 1960s depicting an African tribe.
Susan Sontag New York Review of Books Feb 1975 35min Permalink
A Japanese photographer examines the scene of the St. Valentine's Day massacre; a story from the author of The Black Hour.
"Was it the worst I’d seen? I turned to the camera, viewing the scene anew. Four men lay in a row, as though they had been tucked into a large bed. One slept at their feet, face down. The last hunched on his knees at a round-backed wooden chair. Blood ran toward the center of the room. Later that day when I returned to the newsroom, I would release the image from the machine in my hands, like a dragon from a cage. The city would see the blood, black, and no one would remember that someone—call him Togo or call him Fujita, the name will not be printed—had stood in the dust of men’s bones to face the dragon so that they did not have to."
Lori Rader-Day Time Out Chicago Feb 2008 10min Permalink
How the famed war photographer covered D-Day.
Marie Brenner Vanity Fair Jun 2014 20min Permalink
A profile of photographer Ryan McGinley.
Alice Gregory GQ Apr 2014 20min Permalink
Photographer Trevor Paglen makes art out of government secrets.
Hear Jonah Weiner discuss this article on the Longform Podcast.
Jonah Weiner New Yorker Oct 2012 25min Permalink