Best of 2015: Photos

Floyd Mayweather (Photo by Benjamin Lowy)

Here are my favourite New Yorker photos of 2015:

1. Benjamin Lowy’s “The Kitchen Tent,” for Nick Paumgarten’s "Life Is Rescues" (newyorker.com version), November 9, 2015.

2. Pari Dukovic’s “Chaka Khan,” for "Goings On About Town," June 8, 2015.

3. Landon Nordeman’s “Warm Up,” for "Goings On About Town," July 20, 2015.

4. Landon Nordeman’s “DreamYard,” for Ian Frazier’s "Bronx Dreams," December 7, 2015.

5. Ian Allen’s “Chastity Belt,” for "Goings On About Town," May 25, 2015.

6. Benjamin Lowy’s “Landsbjörg,” for Nick Paumgarten’s "Life Is Rescues," November 9, 2015.

7. Dina Litovsky’s “Timna,” for Silvia Killingsworth’s "Tables For Two," October 26, 2015.

8. Will Mebane’s “School of Rock,” for "Goings On About Town," November 30, 2015.

9. Charlie Engman’s “Blood Orange,” for "Goings On About Town," December 14, 2015.

10. Meredith Jenks’s “Brooklyn Bavarian Biergarten,” for Amelia Lester’s "Tables For Two," October 12, 2015.

Credit: The above portrait of Floyd Mayweather, by Benjamin Lowy, is from Kelefa Sannah’s "The Best Defense," The New Yorker, May 25, 2015.

Mid-Year Top Ten 2015

“Aesthetic hierarchies,” James Wood says, in his great The Nearest Thing to Life, “are fluid, personal, eccentric, always subject to revision, and quite possibly a bit incoherent.” Yes, and they’re also fun. I enjoy evaluating The New Yorker. This time each year, I pause, look back over the past six months, and pick my favorite pieces. Here then is my Mid-Year Top Ten 2015.

Reporting

1. David Owen’s “Where the River Runs Dry” (May 25, 2015)

2. Ian Parker’s “The Shape of Things to Come” (February 23 & March 2, 2015)

3. Raffi Khatchadourian, “A Century of Silence” (January 5, 2015)

4. Jill Lepore’s “The Cobweb” (January 26, 2015)

5. Rivka Galchen’s “Weather Underground” (April 13, 2015)

6. Dana Goodyear’s “The Dying Sea” (May 4, 2015)

7. Rebecca Mead’s “Sole Cycle” (March 23, 2015)

8. Luke Mogelson’s “When the Fever Breaks” (January 19, 2015)

9. Jane Kramer’s “The Demolition Man” (June 29, 2015)

10. William Finnegan's “Tears of the Sun” (April 20, 2015)

Criticism

1. James Wood’s “Look Again” (February 23 & March 2, 2015)

2. Dan Chiasson’s “Out of This World” (April 13, 2015)

3. Peter Schjeldahl’s “Moving Pictures” (March 16, 2015)

4. James Wood’s “Circling the Subject” (May 4, 2015

5. Alex Ross’s “Eyes and Ears” (February 9, 2015)

6. Dan Chiasson’s “Beautiful Lies” (March 30, 2015)

7. Peter Schjeldahl’s “Native Soil” (May 25, 2015)

8. James Wood’s “Story of My Life” (June 22, 2015)

9. Dan Chiasson’s “American Snipper” (June 1, 2015)

10. Anthony Lane’s “High Gear” (May 25, 2015)

Talk of the Town

1. Mark Singer’s “All-Nighter” (May 11, 2015)

2. Ian Frazier’s “Russophilia” (February 16, 2015)

3. Lizzie Widdicombe’s “Air Bus” (June 1, 2015)

4. Nick Paumgarten’s “Hut!” (June 22, 2015)

5. Dana Goodyear’s “Life With Father” (June 29, 2015)

6. Sarah Larson’s “Cinephiles” (January 19, 2015)

7. Nick Paumgarten’s “Life Without Audience” (June 1, 2015)

8. John Seabrook’s “Free” (February 2, 2015)

9. Emma Allen’s “Landlord” (June 29, 2015)

10. Alec Wilkinson’s “Hands” (June 29, 2015)

Best Short Story

Louise Erdrich’s “The Flower” (June 29, 2015)

Best Poem

C. K. Williams, “Hog” (February 23, 2015)

Best Blog Post

Jiayang Fan, “Searching for America with General Tso” (“Cultural Comment,” newyorker.com, March 12, 2015)

Best Illustration

Riccardo Vecchio’s illustration for Jane Kramer’s “The Demolition Man” (June 29, 2015) (see above)

Best Photo

Ian Allen’s portrait of Chastity Belt for “Goings On About Town” (May 25, 2015)

Best Cover

Mark Ulriksen’s “Baseball Ballet” (April 27, 2015)

Best Issue

May 25, 2015, containing, among its many pleasures, David Owen’s superb “Where the River Runs Dry,” three first-rate reviews (Anthony Lane’s “High Gear,” James Wood’s “All Her Children,” and Peter Schjeldahl’s “Native Soil”), and Ian Allen’s ravishing, color-drenched “Goings On About Town” photo of the band Chastity Belt.

Best Sentence

Or does it refer to stuff that’s really, really hard to follow, especially when certain brainiacs insist on reading their turgid prose in a monotone that makes us doubt our very existence, because, Jesus, why doesn’t this guy in the gray turtleneck occasionally look up and, you know, smile? – Mark Singer, “All-Nighter” (May 11, 2015)

Best Paragraph

I went farther into the church, making a list of the things that the people of Diyarbakir had left there. Dried scraps of bread. Automotive carpeting. An old shoe. A fragment of a transistor radio. Corrugated plastic, some of it burned. Where the main altar had been, there was a fire pit; among the ashes, a wrapper for a candy called Coco Fino and empty cans of Efes beer. A rusted wire. Coils of shit. In the inset of a wall, someone had arranged several stones in a neat line. Hundreds of daisies reached upward. And as the sun descended behind the high city walls the smell of grilled meat drifted over from nearby homes, and the sound of children playing began to fill the streets. A ball was kicked and it hit the side of a building and bounced. Some boys clambered over the wall that surrounded the church. Women left their kitchens, and climbed to their roofs to collect carpets that had been put out to air. TVs wired to satellite dishes came on, filling spare rooms with their ethereal glow. All of Diyarbakir, it seemed, except the church, drifted forward in time. Overhead, a flock of common swifts darted and circled among the old stone arches. Their black wings arced like boomerangs as they swooped through the ruins—above the piles of earth, the weeds and the wildflowers, all the trash—and their movements were ceaseless, careless, as if unweighted by anything. – Raffi Khatchadourian, “A Century of Silence” (January 5, 2015)

Best Description

Haslbeck suggested that I try on the lace-up boot, and I slipped my bare foot into it. With the warmth and softness of the fur, and the cradling comfort of the foot bed, it felt wonderful. I think I may have gasped. – Rebecca Mead, “Sole Cycle” (March 23, 2015)

Most Memorable Image

The helicopter made its shuddering descent. Legs shook; sippy cups spilled. Marcy said, “Wow! I love this part!” The pilot yelled, “Touchdown!” – Lizzie Widdicombe, “Air Bus” (June 1, 2015)

Most Inspired Detail

When undone, scarves with modernistic prints sent out gusts of international perfume. – Ian Frazier, “Russophilia” (February 16, 2015)

May 25, 2015 Issue

Pick of the Issue this week is David Owen’s masterly "Where the River Runs Dry." I say “masterly” because the piece shows a superb journalist at the top of his form, deploying his formidable descriptive and analytical gifts to depict a great river, the Colorado, in crisis. The Colorado, which supplies water to approximately thirty-six million people, irrigates close to six million acres of farmland, and powers the hydroelectric plants at the Hoover and Glen Canyon dams, is over-used, over-allocated, and environmentally degraded. Owen says, “The Colorado’s flow is so altered and controlled that in some ways the river functions more like a fourteen-hundred-mile-long canal.” The piece comprehends hydrology, geography, climate change, agriculture, environmental science, and law. Yet it’s immensely readable, structured as a road trip (“Not long ago, I travelled as much of the Colorado’s length as can be followed in a car. I began near the headwaters, put three thousand miles on three rental cars, and ended, eventually, in northern Mexico, where the Colorado simply runs out”). Along the way, Owen visits farmers, scientists, environmentalists, a manager of a pumping station, an owner of a marina, a lawyer specializing in water law. They talk about the Colorado in terms of “paper water,” “wet water,” “over-allocation,” “beneficial use,” “prior appropriation,” “the Law of the River,” “acre-foot,” “the non-consumed fraction,” “water-banking strategies,” “spreading basins,” “indirect recharge,” “pulse flow” – language that gets at the stark reality of what this once mighty river has become, not really a river at all, but a “dispersed and brachiating resource-distribution system.” “Where the River Runs Dry” is absorbing, memorable, beautifully composed– one of this year's best pieces.

Postscript: This issue is a loaded, layered honeycomb of succulent writing. In addition to Owen’s superb “Where the River Runs Dry,” there’s James Wood’s "All Her Children" (“This is storytelling, with the blood-pulse of lived gossip, that little run-on final sentence bearing witness to its coursing unstoppability”), Peter Schjeldahl’s "Native Soil" (“Her touch delivers the key drama of her art: living in sensuous and suffering flesh”), Anthony Lane’s "High Gear" (“You could tattoo the entirety of Max’s dialogue onto his biceps”), and Ian Frazier’s "Lack of Center" (“London plane trees leaned toward one another over the streets, vying for the light”). Also, check out Ian Allen’s “Goings On About Town” photo of Chastity Belt – it’s a beauty!