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Pictures of the Day: Gaza and Elsewhere

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Photos from Gaza City, Syria, Mali and Pakistan.

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Getting to Know You Better

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What would happen if we got 60 top photo editors, publishers, gallery owners and curators together with 160 talented photographers, both established and up-and-coming, for a weekend

We will find out on the weekend of April 13 and 14, when the free New York Portfolio Review, brought to you by the New York Times Lens blog, will be held at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.

We know there will be private portfolio reviews, discussions and, for the younger photographers, workshops and panels. There will be lunches, an evening reception and opportunity to mix and mingle.

But this is an opportunity to create something new. So we will be counting on the participating photographers and reviewers to help make something special.

We have many new names for our list of distinguished reviewers, including:

  • Stacey Baker, picture editor for The New York Times Magazine
  • Sean Corcoran, curator, Museum of the City of New York
  • Melissa Harris, editor-in-chief of Aperture magazine
  • David Alan Harvey, founder of Burn
  • Beth Flynn, deputy picture edito! r for The New York Times
  • Sarah Leen, senior photo editor, National Geographic Magazine
  • Yossi Milo, Yossi Milo Gallery
  • Natalie Matutschovsky, senior photo editor, Time magazine
  • Daniel Power, powerHouse Books, New York Photo Festival
  • Jody Quon, photo editor for New York Magazine
  • Christopher Steighner, senior editor, Rizzoli Publications,

A full list of reviewers who have so far agreed is at the bottom of the post.

So please join us. Saturday is open to all photographers, age 21 and over. Sunday is for photographers ages 18 to 27.

How do you apply

Send us no more than 20 photos from one or two of your best projects. The deadline for application is Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013, 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. Guidelines and instructions are below.

We wll look at everything, pick 160 photographers to participate and notify you by March 8. Once you have been accepted, you will choose who you would like to see from the list of reviewers and we will do our algorithmic best to make everyone reasonably happy.

All kinds of photography â€" from fine art to photojournalism â€" are encouraged. Please note: your photographs will be used only to choose the participants in the review. They will be used for no other purpose.

Our most up-to-date list of participants:

  • Tina Ahrens, co-founder, Emphas.is
  • Felicia Anastasia, Anastasia Photo Gallery
  • Stacey Baker, picture editor, The New York Times Magazine
  • Sam Barzilay, creative director, United Photo Industries
  • David Bram, editor, Fraction magazine
  • Stacey Clarkson, art director, Harper’s magazine
  • Fred R. Conrad, staff photograph! er, The N! ew York Times
  • Sean Corcoran, curator, Museum of the City of New York
  • Jonas Cuenin, co-founder and editor, Le Journal de la Photographie
  • Verna Posever Curtis, curator of photography, Library of Congress
  • Deborah Dragon, deputy photo editor, Rolling Stone magazine
  • James Estrin, co-editor, Lens Blog of The New York Times
  • Liza Faktor, curator and co-founder of Screen
  • Donna Ferrato, photographer
  • Elizabeth Ferrer, director of contemporary art, BRIC Arts Media
  • Beth Flynn, deputy editor of photography, The New York Times
  • Angel Franco, staff photographer, The New York Times
  • David Furst, picture editor, The New York Times Foreign section
  • David Gonzalez, co-editor, Lens Blog of The New York Times
  • Angelika Hal, photo editor, Stern magazine
  • Josh Haner, co-editor, Lens Blog of The New York Times
  • Melissa Harris, editor-in-chief of Aperture magazine
  • David Alan Harvey, editor, Burn magazine
  • Stephanie Heimann, Fovea Gallery
  • Todd Heisler, staff photographer, New York Times
  • Eric Himmel, editor-in-chief, Abrams Books
  • Michael Kamber, Bronx Documentary Center
  • Steven Kasher, Steven Kasher Gallery
  • Deborah Klomp Ching, Klompching Gallery
  • Niko Koppel, picture editor, The New York Times Metropolitan section
  • Elizabeth Krist, senior photo editor, National Geographic Magazine
  • Sarah Leen, senior photo editor, National Geographic Magazine
  • Jean François Leroy, founder and director, Visa Pour l’im! age Photo! Festival
  • Graham Letorney, co-founder & CTO, FotoVisura Inc & guest curator, NPR Picture Show
  • Tiina Loite, picture editor, The New York Times Dining section
  • Meaghan Looram, deputy editor of photography, The New York Times
  • Jose Lopez, picture editor, The New York Times Business section
  • Myles Lyttle, associate photo editor, Time magazine
  • Peter MacGill, Pace/MacGill Gallery
  • Natalie Matutschovsky, senior photo editor, Time magazine
  • Michele McNally, assistant managing editor for photography, The New York Times
  • Yossi Milo, Yossi Milo Gallery
  • Paul Moakley, deputy photo editor, Time magazine
  • Daniel Power, powerHouse Books, New York Photo Festival
  • Jody Quon, photography director, New York magazine
  • Emma Rayes, program director, Magnum Foundation
  • Miriam Romais, executive director, En Foco
  • Kathy Ryan, director of photography, The New York Times Magazine
  • Ariel Shanberg, executive director, The Center for Photography at Woodstock
  • Annick Shen, Open Society Institute
  • Christopher Steighner, senior editor, Rizzoli Publications,
  • Adriana Teresa, co-founder and director, FotoVisura Inc.
  • Scott Thode, VII The Magazine
  • David Walker, executive editor, Photo District News
  • Jamie Wellford, freelance photo editor
  • Patrick Witty, international picture editor, Time magazine
  • Denise Wolff, editor, Aperture
  • Yukiko Yamagata, associate direc! tor, Docu! mentary Photography Project, Open Society Institute
  • Amy Yenkin, director, Documentary Photography Project, Open Society Institute

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Getting to Know You Better

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What would happen if we got 60 top photo editors, publishers, gallery owners and curators together with 160 talented photographers, both established and up-and-coming, for a weekend

We will find out on the weekend of April 13 and 14, when the free New York Portfolio Review, brought to you by the New York Times Lens blog, will be held at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.

We know there will be private portfolio reviews, discussions and, for the younger photographers, workshops and panels. There will be lunches, an evening reception and opportunity to mix and mingle.

But this is an opportunity to create something new. So we will be counting on the participating photographers and reviewers to help make something special.

We have many new names for our list of distinguished reviewers, including:

  • Stacey Baker, picture editor for The New York Times Magazine
  • Sean Corcoran, curator, Museum of the City of New York
  • Melissa Harris, editor-in-chief of Aperture magazine
  • David Alan Harvey, founder of Burn
  • Beth Flynn, deputy picture edito! r for The New York Times
  • Sarah Leen, senior photo editor, National Geographic Magazine
  • Yossi Milo, Yossi Milo Gallery
  • Natalie Matutschovsky, senior photo editor, Time magazine
  • Daniel Power, powerHouse Books, New York Photo Festival
  • Jody Quon, photo editor for New York Magazine
  • Christopher Steighner, senior editor, Rizzoli Publications,

A full list of reviewers who have so far agreed is at the bottom of the post.

So please join us. Saturday is open to all photographers, age 21 and over. Sunday is for photographers ages 18 to 27.

How do you apply

Send us no more than 20 photos from one or two of your best projects. The deadline for application is Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013, 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. Guidelines and instructions are below.

We wll look at everything, pick 160 photographers to participate and notify you by March 8. Once you have been accepted, you will choose who you would like to see from the list of reviewers and we will do our algorithmic best to make everyone reasonably happy.

All kinds of photography â€" from fine art to photojournalism â€" are encouraged. Please note: your photographs will be used only to choose the participants in the review. They will be used for no other purpose.

Our most up-to-date list of participants:

  • Tina Ahrens, co-founder, Emphas.is
  • Felicia Anastasia, Anastasia Photo Gallery
  • Stacey Baker, picture editor, The New York Times Magazine
  • Sam Barzilay, creative director, United Photo Industries
  • David Bram, editor, Fraction magazine
  • Stacey Clarkson, art director, Harper’s magazine
  • Fred R. Conrad, staff photograph! er, The N! ew York Times
  • Sean Corcoran, curator, Museum of the City of New York
  • Jonas Cuenin, co-founder and editor, Le Journal de la Photographie
  • Verna Posever Curtis, curator of photography, Library of Congress
  • Deborah Dragon, deputy photo editor, Rolling Stone magazine
  • James Estrin, co-editor, Lens Blog of The New York Times
  • Liza Faktor, curator and co-founder of Screen
  • Donna Ferrato, photographer
  • Elizabeth Ferrer, director of contemporary art, BRIC Arts Media
  • Beth Flynn, deputy editor of photography, The New York Times
  • Angel Franco, staff photographer, The New York Times
  • David Furst, picture editor, The New York Times Foreign section
  • David Gonzalez, co-editor, Lens Blog of The New York Times
  • Angelika Hal, photo editor, Stern magazine
  • Josh Haner, co-editor, Lens Blog of The New York Times
  • Melissa Harris, editor-in-chief of Aperture magazine
  • David Alan Harvey, editor, Burn magazine
  • Stephanie Heimann, Fovea Gallery
  • Todd Heisler, staff photographer, New York Times
  • Eric Himmel, editor-in-chief, Abrams Books
  • Michael Kamber, Bronx Documentary Center
  • Steven Kasher, Steven Kasher Gallery
  • Deborah Klomp Ching, Klompching Gallery
  • Niko Koppel, picture editor, The New York Times Metropolitan section
  • Elizabeth Krist, senior photo editor, National Geographic Magazine
  • Sarah Leen, senior photo editor, National Geographic Magazine
  • Jean François Leroy, founder and director, Visa Pour l’im! age Photo! Festival
  • Graham Letorney, co-founder & CTO, FotoVisura Inc & guest curator, NPR Picture Show
  • Tiina Loite, picture editor, The New York Times Dining section
  • Meaghan Looram, deputy editor of photography, The New York Times
  • Jose Lopez, picture editor, The New York Times Business section
  • Myles Lyttle, associate photo editor, Time magazine
  • Peter MacGill, Pace/MacGill Gallery
  • Natalie Matutschovsky, senior photo editor, Time magazine
  • Michele McNally, assistant managing editor for photography, The New York Times
  • Yossi Milo, Yossi Milo Gallery
  • Paul Moakley, deputy photo editor, Time magazine
  • Daniel Power, powerHouse Books, New York Photo Festival
  • Jody Quon, photography director, New York magazine
  • Emma Rayes, program director, Magnum Foundation
  • Miriam Romais, executive director, En Foco
  • Kathy Ryan, director of photography, The New York Times Magazine
  • Ariel Shanberg, executive director, The Center for Photography at Woodstock
  • Annick Shen, Open Society Institute
  • Christopher Steighner, senior editor, Rizzoli Publications,
  • Adriana Teresa, co-founder and director, FotoVisura Inc.
  • Scott Thode, VII The Magazine
  • David Walker, executive editor, Photo District News
  • Jamie Wellford, freelance photo editor
  • Patrick Witty, international picture editor, Time magazine
  • Denise Wolff, editor, Aperture
  • Yukiko Yamagata, associate direc! tor, Docu! mentary Photography Project, Open Society Institute
  • Amy Yenkin, director, Documentary Photography Project, Open Society Institute

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.



Pictures of the Day: Syria and Elsewhere

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Photos from Syria, Egypt, Mali and Greece.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.



Does The Times Have Its Act Together on Vulgar Language

Should The Times write about a company if it can’t - or won’t â€" put the name of that company in the article

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it

But it happened this month when Ron Lieber, the business reporter and columnist, wrote about a Web site that helps people organize their financial lives. It has a word in it that only in the rarest of occasions appears in The Times, both in print or online.

Because of The Times’s style rules, which prohibit the use of such language except in the rarest of cases, the article carefully - coyly - wrote around the questionable word, in describing how a Seattle widow reacted to her husband’s death:

In the many months of suffering after Mr. Hernando’s death in July 2009, she beat herself up while spending dozens of hours excavating their finncial life and slowly reassembling it. But then, she resolved to keep anyone she knew from ever again being in the same situation.

The result is a Web site named for the scolding, profane exhortation that her inner voice shouted during those dark days in the intensive care unit. She might have called it getyouracttogether.org, but she changed just one word.

Many readers got it. Some did not.

Mr. Lieber said he heard from some readers that they were puzzled and couldn’t find the site. He said he was frustrated.

“I think if we’re going to devote an entire story to a company or service, we ought to be able to print its name once,” he said.

It’s hard to argue with that. What harm would it do

I talked with Philip B. Corbett, associate managing editor for standards, who agreed that it was unfortunate that the article caused confusion but nevertheless said that keeping coarse language out of The Times is worthwhile.

And, he said, if The Times ! starts using the names of Web sites with that particular word in it, then there might be no end to it, since there are so many. What’s more, where do you draw the line What if - let your imagination run wild â€" the Web site had a significantly more offensive word in it

Because I abide by The Times’s style rules, I’ll rely on the links above to satisfy curious readers. (Of course, you can’t do that from a printed page; that’s part of the problem.)

Readers often complain about similar kinds of things in The Times.  Last fall, The Times insisted on referring to a hit Off Broadway show as “The Cockfight Play,” though that was not its name.  In November, Jane Brody wrote about a quit-smoking book without using its title or, in this case, linking to the book.

I understand that The Times has conservative standards about language.  Its style book makes that clear:

“The Times virtually never prints obscene words, and it maintains a steep threshold for vulgar ones. In part the concern is for the newspaper’s welcome in classrooms and on breakfast tables in diverse communities nationwide. But a larger concern is for the newspaper’s character. The Times differentiates itself by taking a stand for civility in public discourse, sometimes at an acknowledged cost in the vividness of an article or two, and sometimes at the price of submitting to gibes.”

However, it occasionally makes exceptions. I probably would have! made a d! ifferent call on the article about the business Web site.   I also think the name of the play deserved to be used accurately.

Sometimes, clarity and accuracy trump matters of taste.

Meanwhile, the rules on language keep evolving, even at The Times. And this sort of close call may turn out to be a lost cause. As Mr. Corbett put it: ”We’re definitely fighting a rear-guard action.”



On Assignment: The Joy of Dance

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Some photographers live for the the thrill of the unexpected happening right in front of them. Others prefer a more ordered world, where each occurrence is telegraphed far in advance.

Andrea Mohin, a New York Times staff photographer who specializes i dance, says she is trying to capture moves that can be difficult to anticipate.

Sports photographers have the advantage of knowing the goal â€" players have roles and are trying to meet the same ends, often together, as a team. Dance, however, can be totally unpredictable. There is no end zone, no basket. The action is just as quick.

Also, it all takes place in the dark.

Recently, Ms. Mohin was on assignment photographing Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all-male dance company performing “Paquita” at the Joyce Theater in New York. She was shadowed by a videographer, Elaisha Stokes, with whom she shared the joy she finds in dance â€" the “joy in every movement.”

Follow @ElaishaStokes and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.



On Assignment: The Joy of Dance

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Some photographers live for the the thrill of the unexpected happening right in front of them. Others prefer a more ordered world, where each occurrence is telegraphed far in advance.

Andrea Mohin, a New York Times staff photographer who specializes i dance, says she is trying to capture moves that can be difficult to anticipate.

Sports photographers have the advantage of knowing the goal â€" players have roles and are trying to meet the same ends, often together, as a team. Dance, however, can be totally unpredictable. There is no end zone, no basket. The action is just as quick.

Also, it all takes place in the dark.

Recently, Ms. Mohin was on assignment photographing Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all-male dance company performing “Paquita” at the Joyce Theater in New York. She was shadowed by a videographer, Elaisha Stokes, with whom she shared the joy she finds in dance â€" the “joy in every movement.”

Follow @ElaishaStokes and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.



Pictures of the Day: Egypt and Elsewhere

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Photos from Egypt, Syria, Mali and Bulgaria.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.



Pictures of the Day: Egypt and Elsewhere

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Photos from Egypt, Syria, Mali and Bulgaria.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.



A Column About Poverty Programs Creates a Stir and Raises Legitimate Questions

The columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has done some extraordinary journalistic work in recent years, like drawing back the veil on the atrocities in Darfur and raising the public’s consciousness about human sex trafficking worldwide.

But a column closer to home - although it raised important questions about the effectiveness of government-financed programs for the poor and disabled â€" would have benefited from more rigorous reporting.

In December, Mr. Kristof wrote about children and poverty programs in Appalachian Kentucky, where there is a high poverty and illiteracy rate. One of his assertions, and certainly the most startling, was that some parents were removing their children from literacy programs for fear that they would no longer be eligible for federal aid in theform of Supplemental Security Income.

The column began: “This is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability.”

He suggests that some S.S.I. funding should be redirected, since the current setup may help trap children in poverty at an early age.

Since the column appeared, many advocates for the poor and disabled have criticized it harshly, questioning its statistics, sourcing and conclusions. I met with one of those advocates, Jonathan Stein, in December and asked him for a memo summarizing his objections.

After I brought this memo to Mr. Kristof’s attention, he offered to address the responses to his column in a post on his On t! he Ground blog,. and did so last week. He linked to various pieces of criticism; he published Mr. Stein’s lengthy memo in full and responded to it, point by point. (That memo was written with Rebecca Vallas, also with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, where Mr. Stein is counsel.) Mr. Kristof then refuted the criticisms and defended his own reporting, characterizing it as thorough.

Mr. Kristof does plenty of shoe-leather reporting for his columns. He travels widely - to some of the most dangerous parts of the world â€" and talks with many sources.

But in this case, he did not talk to the primary sources, the parents of poor and developmentally disabled children. Given the provocative nature of his opening statement and its importance in setting up the column’s thesis, it should have been completely solid.

One reader, in the comments under last week’s follow-up blog, addressed Mr. Kristof: “You do not seem to have talked to an of the accused parent(s) or their children directly. This is like writing ‘Half the Sky’ without interviewing any poor world women.” (The reference is to Mr. Kristof’s 2010 book, written with his wife, the former Times reporter Sheryl WuDunn, about the global oppression of women.)

Given Mr. Kristof’s high profile as a two-time Pulitzer winner and the influence of The Times’s opinion pages, a column like this can have far-reaching effects - influencing government financing and legislation. (Full disclosure: I was the chairwoman of the Pulitzer commentary jury in 2006 when Mr. Kristof deservedly won that award, largely for his work in Africa.)

Until this point, I have not commented on the column or the reaction, as it played out in letters to the editor, M! r. Kristo! f’s blog and critical pieces outside The Times.

But now, having read all the material - points and counterpoints, objections and defenses â€" I believe that some of the column’s assertions were based on too little direct evidence or used statistical information that is, at the very least, open to interpretation.

I’m glad to see attention paid to poverty in America, a topic ignored during the presidential campaign. And Mr. Kristof, who has earned so much trust among thoughtful readers who care about the underprivileged, may be the ideal columnist to ask if existing programs to help them are the right ones.

That’s all the more reason that what he says should be nailed down tight.



A Column About Poverty Programs Creates a Stir and Raises Legitimate Questions

The columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has done some extraordinary journalistic work in recent years, like drawing back the veil on the atrocities in Darfur and raising the public’s consciousness about human sex trafficking worldwide.

But a column closer to home - although it raised important questions about the effectiveness of government-financed programs for the poor and disabled â€" would have benefited from more rigorous reporting.

In December, Mr. Kristof wrote about children and poverty programs in Appalachian Kentucky, where there is a high poverty and illiteracy rate. One of his assertions, and certainly the most startling, was that some parents were removing their children from literacy programs for fear that they would no longer be eligible for federal aid in theform of Supplemental Security Income.

The column began: “This is what poverty sometimes looks like in America: parents here in Appalachian hill country pulling their children out of literacy classes. Moms and dads fear that if kids learn to read, they are less likely to qualify for a monthly check for having an intellectual disability.”

He suggests that some S.S.I. funding should be redirected, since the current setup may help trap children in poverty at an early age.

Since the column appeared, many advocates for the poor and disabled have criticized it harshly, questioning its statistics, sourcing and conclusions. I met with one of those advocates, Jonathan Stein, in December and asked him for a memo summarizing his objections.

After I brought this memo to Mr. Kristof’s attention, he offered to address the responses to his column in a post on his On t! he Ground blog,. and did so last week. He linked to various pieces of criticism; he published Mr. Stein’s lengthy memo in full and responded to it, point by point. (That memo was written with Rebecca Vallas, also with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, where Mr. Stein is counsel.) Mr. Kristof then refuted the criticisms and defended his own reporting, characterizing it as thorough.

Mr. Kristof does plenty of shoe-leather reporting for his columns. He travels widely - to some of the most dangerous parts of the world â€" and talks with many sources.

But in this case, he did not talk to the primary sources, the parents of poor and developmentally disabled children. Given the provocative nature of his opening statement and its importance in setting up the column’s thesis, it should have been completely solid.

One reader, in the comments under last week’s follow-up blog, addressed Mr. Kristof: “You do not seem to have talked to an of the accused parent(s) or their children directly. This is like writing ‘Half the Sky’ without interviewing any poor world women.” (The reference is to Mr. Kristof’s 2010 book, written with his wife, the former Times reporter Sheryl WuDunn, about the global oppression of women.)

Given Mr. Kristof’s high profile as a two-time Pulitzer winner and the influence of The Times’s opinion pages, a column like this can have far-reaching effects - influencing government financing and legislation. (Full disclosure: I was the chairwoman of the Pulitzer commentary jury in 2006 when Mr. Kristof deservedly won that award, largely for his work in Africa.)

Until this point, I have not commented on the column or the reaction, as it played out in letters to the editor, M! r. Kristo! f’s blog and critical pieces outside The Times.

But now, having read all the material - points and counterpoints, objections and defenses â€" I believe that some of the column’s assertions were based on too little direct evidence or used statistical information that is, at the very least, open to interpretation.

I’m glad to see attention paid to poverty in America, a topic ignored during the presidential campaign. And Mr. Kristof, who has earned so much trust among thoughtful readers who care about the underprivileged, may be the ideal columnist to ask if existing programs to help them are the right ones.

That’s all the more reason that what he says should be nailed down tight.



Redefining Home on the Virginia Peninsula

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Matt Eich was raised in the Tidewater area of the Virginia Peninsula, a series of seven cities and smaller shore communities separated by water yet connected by bridges, tunnels and the presence of many large United States military ases.

The military dominates the economy and the politics tend to be conservative. Traces of over 400 years of history can be seen in the remnants of the Jamestown settlement and in the new old houses of Colonial Williamsburg.

But, truth be told, Mr. Eich never felt particularly connected to the area growing up. He experienced it as a never-ending series of strip malls punctuated by a few places of profound natural beauty.

“Outside of some rural areas and a few pockets of the cities, my perception was it that it was pretty lackluster place,” Mr. Eich said.

After finishing his degree in photojournalism at Ohio University, Mr. Eich returned to home in 2009, not so much out of a yearning for the place but because of practical concerns. At 22, Mr. Eich was married with a 1-year-old daughter, and his parents and all three of his siblings were in the area.

DESCRIPTIONMatt Eich The photographer’s daughter, Meira Eich, 4 months old, nuzzled with her mother, Melissa Eich, 25.

Living there would allow him to pursue his peripatetic career as a photographer while his wife, Melissa, studied for a graduate degree in speech pathology. This year they had another daughter.

So far, Mr. Eich’s career has gone well. He became known as a member of the Luceo collective â€" which he left last summer â€" and has been fairly successful in landing editorial assignments and winning grants to fund his projects.

He pursued a long-term project in Greenwood, Miss., “Sin and Salvation in Baptist Town,” raising money for it on the photography crowd financing platform, emphas.is.

He is now using emphasis again to pay for an exhibition of “The Seven Cities” at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach this fall.

The exhibit will showcase his documentary photographs of the Tidewater community and its military influence, interspersed with photos of his family. “I’m trying to put my family’s narratives into the context of the community,” Mr. Eich said. “I’m also photographing my wife and daughters and parents and siblings and friends we grew up with.”

As he works on decoding the area in which he grew up and defining his own relationship to home, he is also trying to determine whether there is a place in photography for someone to do personal work, have a career and support a family.

Rapid changes in the photography industry have made it impossible to predict if one year of editorial assignment bounty will be followed by another of fam! ine. It i! s hard to plan a career. Like many photographers, Mr. Eich continually struggles to come up with reliable models to tame the turbulent economic forces.

DESCRIPTIONMatt Eich A wounded veteran and a returning sailor shared a kiss at the final homecoming of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

In planning “The Seven Cities,” he endeavored to put together a meaningful project that would keep him near his wife and daughters. He carefully drew up a budget of $70,000 to cover printing and framing, pay a collaborator to gather audio, produce sound installations and build an interactive Web site where community members could upload their stories. It would also pay Mr. Eich a modest amount.

The result so far

“I haven’t come up with a cent for any of it,” he said.

Mr. Eich di receive a $3000 Short Grant from the National Press Photographers Association, which paid for two weeks of shooting last year. This July, he will participate in a Lightwork artist residency in Syracuse, where he will print the work and edit with the photo editors Mike Davis and Deb Davis.

The question facing him and other young photographers in these unpredictable times is how to make pursuing personal work financially sustainable. As he seeks to find solutions he admits, “I don’t have an answer to that.”

“I can tell you that every time I go to a photo conference some National Geographic guy is there saying he’s never struggled to get assignments â€" they just fell into his lap,” Mr. Eich said. “Well, that sounds like a lovely world to live in, but that’s not the world I’ve been given, so I have to figure out how to work with what I got.”

Matt Eich A backyard in Portsmouth, Va.

Follow @MattEichPhoto, @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.



Pictures of the Day: Egypt and Elsewhere

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Photos from Egypt, Mali, Brazil and Saudi Arabia.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.



Women Shooting On The Front Lines

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Lynsey Addario, a  photographer for The New York Times, has extensively covered the war in Afghanistan, often focusing on female soldiers. She spoke with James Estrin about the Pentagon’s recent lifting of the ban on women i combat. The conversation, which took place via Skype from her home in London has been edited.

Q.

When I heard about the lifting of the ban on women in combat, I thought about your coverage of female soldiers for The Times, and also about the interview we did about women covering conflict after you were freed from captivity in Libya. What was your reaction to the announcement

A.

It is a huge step historically, of course, but it’s actually just stating publicly what has been happening little by little over the past decade. Women have been fighting this war more and more, whether we acknowledge it or not.

They’re at bases all across Afghanistan, and they’re playing different roles - from black ops pilots to doing triage in forward-oper! ating medical centers. They’re engaging women in villages of Helmand that are covered with landmines. They are getting shot at. They are dying, and they are getting injured.

Everyone can fight about whether women should be on the front lines, but the fact is that they are out there. So, at some point, you have to acknowledge it and compensate them for it or at least give them the dignity of saying “O.K., you’re out there, and thank you for it.” Instead of saying, “No, they’re not allowed,” but really, they are.

Q.

You’ve often focused on female soldiers.

A.

Mostly in 2009 and 2010. Most of the work I shot on assignment for The New York Times when I was doing a series with Elisabeth Bumiller. And then when I was doing the big National Geographic story on wmen in Afghanistan, I did a few embeds focusing on female soldiers who would meet Afghan women. That work is so dear to me, and I loved shooting it.

Q.

Who are these women joining the military and wanting to be in combat

A.

They’re women who don’t feel inhibited by their sex, by their gender. I mean, they’re women who don’t feel limited by the fact that they were born women. They believe in fighting for their country. They want to be doing something to help fight the wars that we’ve been fighting for over a decade. And they want to be out there.

They’re no different than any of us. They have a goal, and they want to accomplish it. And they don’t want to be told they can’t do it because they’re women.

A lot of them are extremely ambitious, very dedicated. They work out all the time, very intelligent.

DESCRIPTIONLynsey Addario/VII Jesse Russell, a senior pilot with the 82nd Airborne, on call as a medevac pilot at a base in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. Dec. 4, 2009.
Q.

What made you want to do this story to pursue it so deeply

A.

One of the biggest challenges as a photographer is to take a subject that’s been covered for decades and to try to bring something new to it. I’ve been going on these embeds for years, and it’s very hard to make a compelling picture or something new that the reader hasn’t seen before.

When I started seeing women on the front line, I was intrigued.  It felt so strange to me, and I immediately got pulled in. I also had access to them because I was often put in the same tent or made to sleep in the room with all the women. I was always sort of pushed off with the women because on militarybases, there’s a real separation. You know, you have to have separate sleeping quarters for women.

Q.

What is that you learned as you pursued this story

A.

I think the longer these wars go on, and the more women are inserted in these nontraditional roles in the military, the more we have to accept the fact that there are actually women on the front lines.

I myself am a woman, and I’ve been embedding for years with the military. And granted, I’m not carrying thousands of rounds of ammunition and the packs that they carry. But I do go on the same patrols that the men go on and I am able to keep up.

There are great differences between men and women in terms of strength and what we can carry and what we can keep up with, but I don’t think it’s necessary for men and women to be equal. I think that women can play a role on the front line without having to hold up the same amount of weight as men.

Q.

Yo! u said that you don’t have to look at men and women as being equal for women to contribute on the front line. What exactly did you mean

A.

Well, I think one of the arguments a lot of people have is that women can’t hold their own the way men can. For example, if you have a fellow soldier who’s been shot, can you carry his body alone back to a safe place And one of the arguments is that a woman couldn’t do that. So therefore, she shouldn’t be out there.

I don’t know how you work around that. I’m not really sure what the answer is. The fact is that women are not as strong as a lot of men. There are some women who are, but I think, over all, it’s going to be a challenge to find women who can keep up with the physical endurance tests that men can. That said, I’m not sure how important that is anymore because the war is changing. The war we fight now is not the same war that was fought 40 years ago.

DESCRIPTIONLynsey Addario/VII Senior Pilot Jesse Russell, 34, watched a movie at the Kandahar Airfield.

This is a war on terror, this is a war where the front lines are nebulous.

Q.

When we talked about your being on the front lines shortly after you were freed from Libya, you pointed to specific things you thought a woman could bring to the table. A woman may not have the same access to men, but they’re going to have much stronger access to women. And different perspectives. Is there a similar situation for female soldiers on the front line

A.

This gets back into the discussion about what is the front line. The female engagement teams were created to engage with Afghan women â€! " 50 perc! ent of the population â€" that we didn’t have access to before. That’s part of the whole counterinsurgency project. So, if you’re trying to win over a population and you don’t have access to 50 percent of the people, it’s going to be very hard.

You can’t do that with men because, traditionally in Afghanistan, men cannot go into a house and sit down with Afghan women. The female engagement teams went in, and they were able to sit down, drink tea and talk to Afghan women.

How much was accomplished is obviously up for discussion. Some people say not that much was accomplished and that they just went and drank tea. Some people say, “Well, they were able to gain trust of families that didn’t before believe that Americans were good people.”

If your doctrine is counterinsurgency, if you’re trying to win over the population, it’s probably worth the effort to go out and try to engage in a country that’s very segregated by the sexes.

Q.

I’m oder than you, and I remember when there weren’t many women in the military. And there were heated discussions about how women can’t be in the military, how women can’t be captured, how it would harm the other soldiers and it would hurt morale.

A.

Well, I remember when Elizabeth Rubin and I went to the Korengal Valley to embed with the 173rd Airborne. This was for The New York Times Magazine. And Elizabeth wanted to do a story about why, with all the firepower that we had, we weren’t winning the war And how come there was so much collateral damage And so basically, we lived on the side of a mountain for two months of the Korengal Outpost.

But when we first asked the press guys with the military to go to that base, they said, “It is not a place fit for women. You cannot go.” And Elizabeth and I said that’s exactly where we want to go. Now we really want to go.

And s! o finally, we fought so much that they sent us to the Korengal, and we were the only two women there for months. This was before the female engagement teams, and that particular outpost saw heavy fighting all the time. I mean, we were basically shot at or mortared almost on a daily basis.

We kept up with all the patrols. We went on six, seven hour a day patrols. We carried our own stuff. We were out there getting shot at as well. Now, were we carrying guns and ammunition No. So it’s a very different thing. But we were able to keep up and we were able to live out there.

DESCRIPTIONLynsey Addario for The New York Times American Marines preparing for a patrol in northern Helmand, Afghanistan, April 4, 2010.

I think when you start challenging the norms and when you star pushing the boundaries a little, you realize that the boundaries can really be pushed.

Q.

Is there anything that you can think of that is a realistic boundary between male and female soldiers

A.

Yes. I mean, there are times where you need someone who can carry the soldier if he gets shot. Or you need someone who physically can carry a certain amount of rounds of ammunition. I’m not a commander in the military, so there’s a lot I don’t understand.

There are situations where women aren’t really fit to be in certain roles. Special Forces, for example. Do I think women can be in Special Forces I’m not sure. The demand on the body and spending extended periods of time in the middle of nowhere, I don’t know if that’s O.K. for women.

But I do think there is space for women on the front lines, but it is always going to be defined by what exactly is that front line. Because it’s not Vietnam, we’re in a very different ! war.  It! ’s different from 30 years ago, or 20 years ago.

Q.

Is the situation of a female foreign correspondent or photojournalist on the front lines similar to that of female soldiers

A.

It’s different, because the military has layers and layers and layers of command. And so they take decisions as a group.

You know, when you’re dealing with the military, those are decisions that are made at a very high level and passed down. Me, I’m in charge of my own destiny. So I can decide, to a certain extent, how much I want to be in the middle of combat.

One time, we were shot at as I was walking around with one of the female engagement teams. Just because legally, they weren’t allowed to be on the front lines, they were still being shot at on the front lines.

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Up Against the Wall: Prison Snapshots

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At first glance, the childhood photo of Alyse Emdur, her sister and brother could have passed as an ordinary vacation snapshot, complete with palm tree and beach sunset.

But the picture was taken in a New Jersey prison, where M.. Emdur’s brother was serving a sentence for drug-related crimes. The sunset was a painted backdrop.

“I remember how weird it felt to be standing in front of such a happy scene during one of the saddest experiences of my life,” she said. “I didn’t come from a culture where I knew other people who had been in prison. It wasn’t part of my world.”

DESCRIPTIONCollection of Alyse Emdur Remi Emdur, Bruce Emdur and Alyse Emdur, the photographer. Bayside State Prison, Leesburg, N.J. 1988.

Ms. Emdur’s rediscovery of that photo in 2005, nearly two decades after it was taken, set her on a five-year exploration of the postcard-perfect trompe l’oeil landscapes that are ubiquitous in prisons across the country. She collected more than 100 photos of inmates pos! ing in prison visiting rooms against misty waterfalls, autumn forests, city skylines and bald eagles.

“They’re about going to another place and escaping the prison into this dream land,” said Ms. Emdur, 29, who grew up in Cherry Hill, N.J., and now lives in Los Angeles.

Her original idea was to go into prisons and personally photograph the landscapes and inmates, and the artists responsible for them. But she soon discovered that the inmates’ own photos, taken by friends or family, were much more powerful than anything she could produce.

“I didn’t want my presence to have an impact,” she said. “I wanted to see people represent themselves.”

With that decision, her project changed direction drastically. The book that came from it, “Prison Landscapes,” published this month, is an unusual collection of photographs taken by others, with only a handful of her own pictures included. Her photos are striking, tw-page pullouts, each one a different backdrop, along with the cinder-block walls and security cameras alongside them.

Ms. Emdur tracked down the inmates’ photos by writing to about 300 inmates on pen-pal Web sites and asking them to send her a portrait standing in front of a backdrop. Roughly half of them responded, and she received scores of pictures - a man in prison khakis in Marion, Ill., holding his children in front of a row of skyscrapers; a blond woman kneeling in Quincy, Fla., next to a bunny rabbit; a bodybuilder flexing by a waterfall in Malone, N.Y.

She was fascinated by the various backdrops, which she saw as small grace notes from inside cold, hard places.

“Letting these images be happier, idealized landscapes, it’s a humane gesture to soften the blow of the reality,” she said.

Some of the prisoners wrote letters to Ms. Emdur to accompany their photos. She corresponded regularly with a few of them, but the terrain was complicated to navigate.

“Th! e relatio! nship between the incarcerated and the free is very complex,” she said. “Whenever you’re working with people, when the project ends, the book is published, the relationships don’t end.”

In her book, she republished many letters that inmates wrote to her.

“When I took this picture, I was thinking about being free,” wrote Tyler Miesse, who posed before a snow-capped mountain in prison in Aberdeen, Wash. “I felt like I was ready to go kick it, hang out or go to the waterfront and enjoy the nice warm summer breeze and sunset but my reality is that I’m locked up.”

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Pictures of the Day: Egypt and Elsewhere

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Photos from Egypt, Russia, Syria and more.

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From Readers: Complaints, Kudos and Suggestions for 2013 and Beyond

One thing I’ve found out about many Times readers is that they are not short on opinions - and not hesitant to share them.

In my column in last week’s Sunday Review, I wrote about the business challenges facing The Times - the increasing role of revenue from digital subscriptions, the continued problems caused by the decline of print advertising - and the importance of the year ahead.

The column produced passionate and wide-ranging response from readers that fell into a number of different categories.

Here’s a sense of it:

1. Readers feel strongly that The Times should not cut back on environmental reporting. I wrote two weeks ago about Times editors’ plans to dismantle its environment pod of reporters and editor dedicated to coverage of the environment. Editors emphasized to me that they still plan to have nearly as many staff members devoted to the topic, that coverage won’t suffer, but that the structure will be different. As I noted in my post, that sounds good in theory but may turn out to be a hard promise to keep.

2. Many readers want The Times to keep publishing a print edition forever. And they are fearful that it won’t. Sally Chrisman of Princeton, N.J., echoed Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do I love thee Let me count the ways The New York Times is present in my life.” Among the ways: “The pre-dawn smack of the paper hitting my sidewalk … the main section open beneath my cereal … the sections I finish or reread in late afternoon … the articles I clip for my students and colleagues …”

3. Some readers want to help The Times survive. Some readers went so far as to say that they would be willing to help out with extra contr! ibutions beyond their subscriptions. I had one phone call from a man who wanted to write a check then and there: $50 as an indication of his loyalty - above and beyond his subscription.

Jack Ratliff, a Santa Fe, N.M., reader who called the print Times “the touchstone for political discussions among friends,” said that he and his wife “would happily include The Times, along with NPR and PBS, as part of our annual giving.”

4. Many have suggestions for improvement. They focused on coverage or features that they think would boost readership and circulation; several mentioned more searching investigative coverage of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration.

Some want to see a broader spectrum of political opinion on the Op-Ed page.

“I would just ask that the conservative voice be given more inches or columnists,” writes Hank Humphrey of Fort Oglethorpe, Ga. “Even a smidgen more would be appreciated.”

Paul Rubinstein of Manhattan agreed, exending his criticism to story placement on the news pages, and he wrote: “The Wall Street Journal, while admittedly far more conservative than The Times, has a more straightforward approach, both to opinions and reporting. “

5. Print subscribers want to know: If I’m so important, why can’t I get my paper on time Many readers told me of their frustration and troubles with timing or placement of their delivered papers, or of not being able to find The Times at their newsstands, both in the metropolitan region and elsewhere. The public editor’s office does not deal with customer service or circulation problems; my assistant and I forward such complaints to the customer service department in circulation.

We’ll give the final words here to the alpha and omega of those who responded.

David deBeer wrote about all the reasons that The Times is not relevant enough to him to cause him to subscribe - everything from his dissatisfaction with international reporti! ng to the! policies of the opinion pages. “Instead, I log onto the Internet and listen to Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez’s ‘Democracy Now’ for the critical reporting that is missing in The Times. Then I occasionally skim The Times at Starbucks to see what was left out, and remind me why I don’t subscribe.”

And on the other end of the spectrum, Roberta Jordan spoke of her longtime bond with The Times: “The N.Y. Times has been my companion since high school in the ’70s in the Berkshires … there for me on a 17-year stint in St. Pete, Fla. … at graduate school in San Francisco and halfway back from Florida to New England when I moved to Asheville, N.C. Even here on top of our Blue Ridge mountain, I listen for the distinct thump late on Saturday nights, when Sunday arrives early and The N.Y. Times hits the deck. No matter where I am geographically, spiritually, educationally, intellectually or emotionally, I have found connection and satisfaction through The N.Y. Times.”



Familiar Rooms, Hidden Faces

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If looking at Alison Brady’s photographs makes you inexplicably uncomfortable, then she has accomplished her goal. Her images are carefully structured to blend the familiar with the unknown â€" antique furniture and vintage fabrics jutaposed with unnaturally twisted body forms â€" with the hope of getting viewers to ask one question: “I know these objects, but why does this all feel so foreign”

Ms. Brady’s quest to create images that explore her feelings between conscious and subconscious thoughts began several years ago when she learned that her brother had been told he had schizophrenia. She was studying photography at New York City’s School of Visual Arts, but the idea of her reality being distorted by mental illness left her in a constant state of fear.

“It was a feeling of being normal and everything being O.K. to everything changing,” she said. “I started developing this fear, like, what if one day the reality I knew just changed”

So she began to delve into her feelings through images. Reflecting on her childhood home in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ms. Brady remembers a house overdone with 70s décor, accented with colorful patterns and uncomfortable textures. To set up most of her shots, she! also found everyday household objects â€" dirty bed sheets, cotton balls, pillows, carpets, fake flowers â€" which she used with the printed fabrics to create a feeling of nostalgia and familiarity.

DESCRIPTIONAlison Brady

To trigger more unnerving feelings, she would then place her subjects in distressing positions, often effacing or concealing their faces.

“What I try to do is bring you in with beautiful colors and textures and then leave you feeling like something is wrong here, something is not quite right,” Ms. Brady said. “I think we can all relate to that feeling.”

For the past eight years, Ms. Brady, 33, has traveled between New York, where she lives, to more remote locations in Pennsylvania and Ohio to set up her photographs, seeking settings that re naturally weathered to encapsulate the emotion of a long-forgotten memory.

To create one of her images (Slide 4), Ms. Brady booked a room at an old pay-by-the-hour motel in New York, known at the time for being a common spot for drug users. Her subject is seen lying face down on a circular bed in a dirty motel room with her feet lifelessly hanging off the edge of the bed. An old push-button telephone is closely placed next to an empty ashtray. The bedspread, with the common print of motels, is stained and torn.

Ms. Brady liked the idea of going to the motel, specifically for the old-fashioned circular bed. She said the shape helped create the feeling of despair in the woman.

“This was the weirdest place I ever photographed,” she said. “Whenever we moved anything, we would find used condoms and syringes. But this image was about just giving up and being sort of exhausted. It was about just letting go.”

With her photographs, Ms. Brady also uses her subjects to questio! n female ! identity, sexuality and standards of beauty â€" an issue she often questioned growing up in a conservative Roman Catholic household.

In one portrait series, Ms. Brady places her subjects in colorful vintage dresses and poses them with erect postures with their hands modestly folded in their laps. Tiny flowers are carefully placed over the subject’s faces, concealing any identity or expression. The idea for this series, Ms. Brady explained, was inspired by a woman she saw applying makeup on the train one day.

“This girl was putting on a ridiculous amount of makeup,” she said. “It felt like she was hiding who she was. I thought, how do you take that idea of trying to hide yourself, but wanting to present yourself as beautiful This was just an exaggeration of that feeling.”

Ms. Brady finds that guarding her subjects’ faces allows her viewers to focus on the gestures and subtle details of their body language. She considers her work a combination of photography, still life and art ad is currently working on a 30-minute video installation that will expand her work in moving form.

Although some of her work has dark and uncomfortable subject matter, Ms. Brady hopes that people will also see the humor in most of the situations.

“Using humor to defuse a tense situation is something that has definitely become part of my life,” she said. “Dealing with a situation and still being able to laugh or understand what is going on in your own unconscious, and still being able to see a lighter side to it.”

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Pictures of the Day: Egypt and Elsewhere

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Photos from Egypt, Syria, Mali and Romania.

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Pictures of the Day: Egypt and Elsewhere

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Photos from Egypt, Syria, Mali and Romania.

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Getting to Know You

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Let’s get to know each other better. In a real, analog kind of way.

Come to the First New York Photography Portfolio Review, a free two-day gathering in April sponsored by The New York Times Lens Blog. The event will feature private critiques, discusions and workshops on topics ranging from photo editing to grant writing to business practices to finding a gallery to represent you.

The Review is a chance for a diverse group of 160 photographers to meet with leading photo editors, museum curators, book publishers and gallery owners for one-on-one portfolio reviews. It will also also be an opportunity for people in the photographic community to meet, trade ideas and help each other.For free.

Photographers will be screened, and because we’re sure many people will apply, the quality of the work has to be high - nothing less than your best. The Review begins on Saturday, April 13, and will be open to all photographers age 21 and up. Each participant will have five or six private 20-minute meetings.

Sunday, April 14, is for young photographers, ages 18 to 27, and will include both portfolio reviews and workshops with leading professionals.

We will screen all applicants and choose a total of 100 participants for Saturday and 60! for Sunday. All kinds of photography - from fine art to photojournalism - are encouraged.

How do you apply

Send us no more than 20 photos. Application deadline is 11:59 p.m. Eastern, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013. Guidelines and instructions are below.

We’ll look at everything, pick 160 photographers to participate and notify you by March 8. Once you have been accepted, you will choose from a list of reviewers you would like to see and we will do our algorithmic best to make everyone reasonably happy.

Space for the event has been generously donated by the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism on West 40th Street in Manhattan.

Oh, and did we mention that it’s free

A partial list of reviewers:

  • Michele McNally, assistant managing editor for photography, The New York Times
  • Kathy Ryan, director of photography, The New York Ties Magazine
  • Meaghan Looram, deputy editor of photography, The New York Times
  • David Furst, Foreign picture editor, The New York Times
  • James Estrin, co-editor, Lens Blog
  • David Gonzalez, co-editor, Lens Blog
  • Josh Haner, co-editor, Lens Blog
  • Paul Moakely, deputy photo editor, Time magazine
  • Patrick Witty, international picture editor, Time magazine
  • Eric Himmel, editor-in-chief, Abrams
  • Denise Wolff, photobook editor, Aperture
  • Verna Posever Curtis, curator of photography, Library of Congress
  • Steven Kasher, Steven Kasher Gallery
  • Pe! ter MacGill, Pace/MacGill Gallery
  • Elizabeth Krist, senior photo editor, National Geographic
  • Jean François Leroy, founder and director, Visa Pour l’image Photo Festival
  • David Walker, executive editor, Photo District News
  • Jean-Jacques Naudet, co-founder and editor, Le Journal de la Photographie
  • Tina Ahrens, co-founder and chief operating officer, Emphas.is
  • Ariel Shanberg, executive director, Center for Photography at Woodstock
  • Miriam Romais, executive director, En Foco
  • Elizabeth Ferrer, director of contemporary art, BRIC Arts Media
  • Emma Raynes, program director, Magnum Foundation
  • Yukiko Yamagat, associate director, Documentary Photography Project, Open Society Institute

This is a partial list, which we will update early next week. There will be more than 50 reviewers from museums, magazines, galleries and book publishers.

Join Us. Let’s do something good, and let’s have some fun.

Details on how to apply.



Pictures of the Day: Mali and Elsewhere

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Photos from Mali, Israel, India and more.

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The Raging Debate Over Objectivity and Transparency

The objectivity argument I wrote about this month continues to simmer. In the interests of making this blog a continuing conversation about journalism issues, large and small, I’m posting a few of the most substantial pieces on this subject that I’ve seen in recent weeks.

Tom Kent, the standards editor for The Associated Press, wrote a strong defense of objectivity for the Ethical Journalism Network.

He wrote:

That everyone understands objectivity differently makes it a dangerously fuzzy concept, easy road kill in the rush to new journalistic techniques. We dismiss it at our peril.

At heart, objective journalism sets out to establish the facts about a situation, report fairly the range of opinion around it nd take a first cut at what arguments are the most reasonable. To keep the presentation rigorous, journalists should have professional reporting and editing skills (be they staff or independent journalists, paid or unpaid). To show their commitment to balance, journalists should keep their personal opinions to themselves.

Jeff Greenfield, a longtime television reporter and analyst, now a commentator for Yahoo News, explained that in the interests of objectivity, he did not vote for many years.

Jay Rosen, a New York University professor, wrote a blog post in direct response to my column. He sees a new and better system emerging: “Accuracy and verification, fairness and intellectual honesty - traditional virtues for sure - join up with transparency, ‘show your work,! ’ the re-voicing of individual journalists, fact-checking …”

And the journalist Matthew Ingram, writing for PaidContent.org, wrote that it’s too late anyway to keep reporters “impartial” in the traditional sense - the horse has left the barn â€" and he notes, “In the long run, it’s worth asking what we can gain by allowing reporters to be human beings while they do their jobs, instead of only asking what we lose by doing so …”

And in a sense, I followed up on the column myself when I questioned the unusual first-person voice in a front-page story by the reporter Scott Shane about the former Central Intelligence Agency official John Kiriakou. It wasn’t in keeping with traditional ideas about objectivity, but its transparenc with the reader about the reporter’s role fended off potential problems.

One of my favorite responses came from Damien Cave, The Times’s correspondent in Mexico, on Twitter, who brought up a crucial element that I had not addressed head-on: fairness.

In a swiftly changing journalism world, it’s a debate that’s worth continuing to explore. And I doubt that this is the last we’ll hear of it.



Looking Back, With Nostalgia and Pain

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At first glance, there’s nothing extraordinary about Yang Seung-woo’s photograph of two boys leaping playfully across mounds of earth (slide 7). In many ways, it does not fit in well with the rest of the images that make up his project “The Best Days.”

But Mr. Yang sees a lot in that moment, in those carefree steps.

“It represents life and death,” he said.

The setting is a Korean cemetery. The boys are playing around the grave of Mr. Yang’s close friend, a high school buddy who hanged himself after a short, but hard life in Korea’s gang world and in prison. It was a world â€" and fate â€" that almost claimed Mr. Yang, too.

Mr. Yang â€" who was born in 1966 in Kwangju, Korea â€" took the picture in 2004, when he’d already been living in Japan for seven years. He shot it on one of many return visits to his homeland, recalling the life he once lived.

Two years earlier, while considering his friend’s short life during the funeral, he had been saddened by what he was sure would be an even shorter legacy: within a few months, most people would forget the young man.

Mr. Yang could not. The two had met during their first year of h! igh school. Together, Mr. Yang said, they were “not good boys.” Mr. Yang moved from school to school. In their second or third year of high school, his friend went to prison after being convicted of murder. By the time he was released, younger men had become powerful figures in the Korean Kangpae, the criminal underworld. His friend became a flunky. Ashamed and embarrassed, he ultimately took his own life.

Mr. Yang felt as if he had to do something, both to salve his sadness and memorialize his friend. And so the next year, he started photographing. He was studying photography at Tokyo Polytechnic University and had decided that if he didn’t make a big change in his life, he wouldn’t be able to escape the world that he was luring him ever deeper. He was tired of the fear that he’d be stabbed just walking down the wrong street.

DESRIPTIONYang Seung-woo A woman traveling to Tokyo by train to sell clothing.

Korea had become too small. That’s why he had moved to Japan in 1997 to learn the language, and later, photography. At the time, Mr. Yang was not a full a member of the Kangpae. He and his friends were on the edges of the criminal life, toying with the possibility of entering that world, though free - they thought - of its consequences. But he did begin to worry about living a life that wouldn’t be so much about youthful mischief as it was about crime.

“It’s not exciting; it’s not fun,” he said through a translator in Japanese. “You’re not doing it with your friends.”

He remained close with those friends, though â€" in particular, with four who agreed to be photographed. He wanted to create a record of their lifestyle, looking back at his youthful days through a somewhat rose-colored lens (in black-and-white).

Other photog! raphers h! ave documented the lives of gangsters â€" like Jocelyn Bain Hogg, whose projects documented the British underworld. Mr. Yang’s access was different. These are his close friends. All four were open to being photographed â€" perhaps persuaded, he joked, because he was once the strongest of the group.

But Mr. Yang, too, was open. Despite the nature of some images â€" sex, gambling, alcohol â€" there was nothing he didn’t want to show. He sought to present an honest visual document, to portray the lifestyle as he’d known it. At the same time, he was working through his own feelings, photographing life as he saw it.

Mark Pearson, the owner of Zen Foto Gallery, where “The Best Days” was exhibited in November, said the series is central to Mr. Yang’s work.

Yet it wasn’t the first of his projects that Mr. Pearson showed at Zn Foto, which is in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. Earlier, Mr. Yang’s “less extreme” photos of Gonta, a homeless man he documented closely, were exhibited.

“Back in Korea,” Mr. Pearson said of that work, “it’s extremely powerful.”

In Tokyo, where Mr. Yang has now lived for 16 years, he has been documenting night life in the Shinjuku district - and in particular, Kabukichō, a red-light district that has parallels with his old haunts in Korea.

DESCRIPTIONYang Seung-woo Back in Japan.

While “The Best Days” was largely finished in 2006, Mr. Yang is still working on the project, and others that focus on the idea of memory. But despite the nostalgic tone of! his work! , he does not want to return to Korea, preferring instead to travel elsewhere. Living in Japan on an artist’s visa, he finances his photography by picking up odd jobs.

His life, he said, is “not so easy.”

Yang Seung-woo’s work appeared on the blog Invisible Photographer Asia in December, shortly after the release of his book, “The Best Days,” which was published by Zen Foto Books. More images appear on IPA and on his Web site. Follow @kerrimac, @ZenFotoGallery and @nytimesphoto on Twitter.



Pictures of the Day: Syria and Elsewhere

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Photos from Syria, Mali, South Africa and more.

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