June 30, 2025 Issue

Notes on this week’s issue:

1. Vince Aletti, in his mini-review of “Constellation,” a Diane Arbus exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory, describes Arbus’s work as “tough, provocative, and brilliantly dark.” I agree. He also says that Arbus “isn’t easy to love.” This is also true. Aletti’s note reminded me of Susan Sontag’s great essay on Arbus – “Freak Show” [The New York Review of Books, November 15, 1973; included in her brilliant On Photography (1977) under the title “America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly”]. It contains one of my favorite Sontag sentences: “Hobbesian man roams the streets, quite visible, with glitter in his hair.”

2. Hilton Als’ “Goings On” review of Gagosian Gallery’s “Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting” is illustrated with a reproduction of de Kooning’s “Suburb in Havana” (1958). It’s one of my favorite de Koonings. I first saw it in a piece by T. J. Clark called “Frank Auerbach’s London” (London Review of Books, September 10, 2015). Clark writes, 

If I’d been able to glimpse a de Kooning landscape from ten years earlier – say, Suburb in Havana from 1958 – lurking under Autumn Morning, I might have been a little less at sea. But the problem would only have shifted ground. I would still have had to sort out why and how de Kooning’s elegant, lavatorial graffiti – his Cuban-blue depth, the lavish decisiveness of his foreground ‘V’ – were turned in the Auerbach into a kind of waterlogged storm-streaked slipperiness. 

"Elegant lavatorial graffiti"? Ouch. Clark has thrown a barb. Is he right? 

3. A shout-out to photographer Heami Lee for her delectable pizza shot in Helen Rosner’s “Tables for Two: Cactus Wren.”

4. And let’s give a huzzah for Alena Skarina’s wonderful, eye-catching illustration for Elizabeth Kolbert’s disconcerting “Seeds of Doubt.”

 

Best of 2020: Photos

Photo by Joseph Michael Lopez, for "April 15, 2020"

Here are my favorite New Yorker photographs of 2020:

1. Joseph Michael Lopez’s photo for “April 15, 2020,” May 4, 2020 (see above).

2. Naila Ruechel’s photo for Hannah Goldfield’s “Tables For Two: EMP To Go” (November 23, 2020).

3. Dina Litovsky’s photo for Helen Rosner’s “What We’re Buying for the Quarantine” (March 18, 2020).

4. Paolo Pellegrin’s photo for Ben Taub’s “Five Oceans, Five Deeps” (May 18, 2020).

5. Collier Schorr’s photo for Amanda Petrusich’s “Opened Up” (October 19, 2020).

6. Andre D. Wagner’s photo for “April 15, 2020” (May 4, 2020).

7. Caroline Tompkins’ photo for Hannah Goldfield’s “Table for Two: Aquavit” (January 27, 2020).

8. Christaan Felber’s photo for “This Week” (April 27, 2020).

9. Christopher Payne’s photo for his “Vital Vessels” (December 7, 2020).

10. Heami Lee’s photo for Hannah Goldfield’s “Tables For Two: Edy’s Grocer” (December 7, 2020).

"Tables For Two" Photos: 5 Favorites

Zachary Zavislak, "Nur" (2017)

I relish “Tables for Two.” Among its many pleasures – the food descriptions, the evaluative criticism, the piquant details – are the photo illustrations. Many of them are inspired. Here are five of my recent favorites:

1. David Williams, “Van Da” (May 27, 2019)

I love the way the top of that luminous green bottle thrusts up into the shot. Most photographers would remove it before shooting. Williams uses it to jazz his double portrait with a translucent bit of jade.

2. Heami Lee, “Teranga” (May 6, 2019)

The star of this gorgeous shot isn’t the food; it’s the circular yellow-and-black table. What a yellow! Van Gogh would’ve loved it.

3. Dolly Faibyshev, “HaSalon” (July 1, 2019)

The rakish angle, the way the rough edge of the tabletop slashes the composition, the black-framed rectangles of sky and city street – all combine to make this shot impeccably original.

4. William Mebane, “Hanon” (July 22, 2019)

So many great Mebane photos to pick from. I chose this quasi-abstract still life for its elegant simplicity.

5. Zachary Zavislak, “The Fly” (April 1, 2019)

Like Mebane, Zavislak is a master “Tables for Two” photographer. The above still life features no less than twenty artfully arranged items (not counting cutlery). 

Who is the best “Tables for Two” photographer? There are at least seven candidates: David Williams, Dolly Faibyshev, Eric Helga, Krista Schlueter, William Mebane, Amy Lombard, and Zachary Zavislak. But for me it comes down to Mebane v. Zavislak. I give the edge to Mebane on the strength of his striking portraits. This one, for example, from Hannah Goldfield’s “Tables For Two: Sofreh” (September 14, 2018):