The New Yorker & Me: Mark Neville

Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Galchen, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Showing posts with label Mark Neville. Show all posts

Friday, December 30, 2022

Best of 2022: Photos

Mila Teshaieva, Bridge Over Irpin River (2022)

Here are my favorite New Yorker photos of 2022:

1. Mila Teshaieva's photo for Keith Gessen's "How the War in Ukraine Might End," September 29, 2022 (see above);

2. Dina Litovsky's photo for Helen Rosner's "We Watch the News and We're Crying" (March 8, 2022);

3. James Nachtwey's photo for his "A Harrowed Land" (May 9, 2022);

4. Mark Neville's photo for his "Days of War" (March 7, 2022);

5. Peter Fisher's photo for "Goings On About Town" (August 8, 2022);

6. Jérôme Sessini's photo for Masha Gessen's "The Devastation of Kharkiv" (March 22, 2022);

7. Philip Montgomery's photo for his "Blade Runners" (November 28, 2022);

8. Paul S. Amundsen's photo for Rebecca Mead's "Norwegian Wood" (April 25 & May 2, 2022);

9. Daniel Berehulak's photo for Luke Mogelson's "Everyone Is a Target" (August 1, 2022);

10. Eric Helgas's photo for Shauna Lyon's "Tables For Two: El Quijote" (June 6, 2022).

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

March 7, 2022 Issue

A special shout-out to The New Yorker for its “Days of War,” a portfolio of Mark Neville’s photos, in this week’s issue. Neville’s portraits catch the remarkable strength of Ukrainian character in the face of Russia's vicious invasion. Joshua Yaffa, in his accompanying text, quotes Neville as follows:

“What I find most remarkable is the resilience of the people there,” Neville says. “As a photographer, I’ve been in many places where people are going through incredible trauma. They would reach out to me for help, for money, to get them out, and I would say, ‘The only way I can help is to take your picture and tell your story.’ But with Ukrainians, and with some of the many hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced, no one—not one—has asked me for anything. The only thing they want is to sit me down and tell me what’s happened to them. They have lost people, seen people wounded terribly, seen their streets obliterated. All I want is for people who are looking at these pictures to recognize a version of themselves. Schoolkids taking gymnastics lessons, people just going about their lives despite the shelling and more. For eight years! Can you imagine?”