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Pictures of the Day: Syria and Elsewhere

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Photos from Syria, Mali, West Bank and Pakistan.

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The Newest and Youngest Americans

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After spending 17 years of my career abroad, photographing immigration issues in America seemed like a natural fit for me when I moved back to the United States. In 2009, I began photographing undocumented workers in the fields of Colorado and the deserts of Arizona as well as eportation flights to Central America. This year, I’ve covered several naturalization ceremonies, ­like when I flew to Tampa, Fla., on Valentine’s Day to photograph 28 married couples who received their citizenship at a special lovers’ day event.

But this week’s photo shoot, with some of the country’s youngest and newest citizens, was even more special.

A total of 300 children, all born abroad, as young as age 4 and others in their late teens â€" even a 41-year-old “kid” (below) â€" came to collect their citizenship certificates at the Federal Building in Downtown Manhattan. All of them were children of naturalized citizens â€" their parents had moved to the United States legally, went through the lengthy naturalization process, then brought their children over.

DESCRIPTIONJohn Moore/Gett! y Images Otis Hemmings, 41, born in Jamaica, said he was brought to the United States by his parents when he was 7, but only applied decades later for his United States citizenship papers.

During my Valentine’s Day shoot, the fluorescent lights had made the recitation of the national anthem and Pledge of Allegiance a little less romantic than it could have been. (And I was just barely able to transmit
and make my flight back to New York City in time for a Valentine’s dinner â€" thankfully without harsh lighting.)

With the children’s event this week, I took a different approach from my normal editorial style and went with lighted portraits. Having spent much of my career in conflict zones overseas, my experience shooting studio style portraiture of children is, let’s say, limited. That said, I have two young daughters, so speaking with children and making them feel comfortable­ â€" quickly â€" now comes naturally.

To help organize the shot, officials with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services approached families in the waiting room and brought them to a makeshift studio â€"­ a cabled strobe with umbrella softbox, a spot on the floor marked for the children to stand, and a black muslin cloth, which was gaffer-taped to the wall.

DESCRIPTIONJohn Moore/Getty Images Darianny Martinez immigrated with her parents from the Dominican Republic.

I hoped the simple setup gave more weight to the subjects â€" ­all of them adorable â€" from a spread of cultures and backgrounds as big as our world. A family from Yemen brought their children over in 2010, just as the country was swept up in the violence of the Arab Spring. I photographed their daughter, Layla (with her brother in Slide 14), age 11, both wea! ring her ! head scarf and without it (Slide 19), which was her preference.

The difference was striking.

An 18-year-old from Nigeria, Bushra (Slide 13), raised her hand as though for the Pledge of Allegiance, which she would make a few minutes later during her citizenship ceremony. She looked ready to start a modeling career.

An excited 5-year-old proudly held up two American flags for his portrait (below), but a few frames later gave me a more nuanced look, as a warm puddle spread out from his dress shoes.

The oldest “kid” of the group, Otis Hemmings, 41, his chin stubbled with gray, finally received his citizenship certificate, decades after his parents brought him over from Jamaica ­at age 7.

Key to the individual photos were the captions. My assistant for the shoot, Melinda Anderson, carefully asked each family not only for nationalities, names and ages, but also what jobs the parents found here and which borough of New York City they live in. This city, after all, has more interntional diversity than any place in the country.

With immigration, much of my work has focused â€" and will continue to in the near future â€" on the tough parts of the story: federal agents chasing thirsty immigrants through the desert, detention centers full of immigrants held on their way to deportation, often penniless, to their home countries. But still, as we often hear, America is a country of immigrants. It would appear that with immigration overhaul by the government at last a possibility, this story will be in front of us for some time. Once in a while we find the joyous part of any tough story, and this shoot of young and new Americans was just that.

DESCRIPTIONJohn Moore/Getty Images Ifeozuwa Oyaniyi, 5, born in Nigeria.

John Moore is an award-winning photographer for Getty Images. Some of his work has been featured on Lens before.

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Going Off the Grid - but Not for Long

I will be out of the office and mostly off the grid until the end of next week. I won’t be blogging. I doubt that I can step away from Twitter altogether.

My print column, scheduled to appear in the Sunday Review section, takes up the question often posed by readers of how much editing and direction The Times’s star Op-Ed columnists receive.

I’ll be back to take up the pressing questions of the day â€" whatever they are by then.

One addendum, for the sake of clarity: As public editor, I speak only for myself. My opinions about what happened during and after the Tesla Model S road test, expressed in my Monday blog post, are not those of The Times.



Looking Beyond the Literal

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Armando L. Sanchez is a 25-year-old freelance photographer who was born and raised in Austin, Tex., and is now based in Chicago. He studied photography at Western Kentucky University and received a B.A in interdisciplinary studie last year. He has had four â€" yes, count them, four â€" newspaper internships: at The Tennessean in Nashville, The Saginaw News in Michigan, The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill., and most recently at The Chicago Tribune.

His phone conversation with James Estrin has been edited.

Q.

Tell me about the photograph that you chose. What’s going on

A.

I had an assignment to photograph a Western Kentucky professor at a sailboat race. I was sitting on the edge of the sailboat, and it was raining really, really hard. I’d never really photographed in the rain on a sailboat on a river. And I was hanging over the edge of the sailboat and waiting for him to turn around, because he was facing the other way while they were heeling. And I just kept thinking, if he turns around, this will work, if he turns around, this will work.

Q.

Why was it a turning point for you What’s the importance of the image

A.

Well, before I took this I had three newspaper internships. And I had really focused heavily on photojournalism. I love photojournalism, I have a passion for it, that’s what I want to do, but that’s the only photography I had ever looked at. That spring, I started to look at the history of photography and I started studying it as an art form.

This photo was the first time that I didn’t feel obligated to make a certain picture that an editor wanted. I just looked for the most beautiful image that was out there. I tried to make something for me.

Q.

You felt a freedom to make your own image

A.

Before that I’d always thought of photography as a very literal thing, very documentary. You go to a scene and you honestly document what you see and how you see it. And you bring it back and it matches the assignment and it matches what the writer writes, and that’s what I saw as my place in the world.

Q.

How did this photograph change the way you photographed

A.

I’ve always been kind of scared to photograph for myself because I thought that I would miss something â€" what the paper wanted me to photograph. And that was the first time I realized that I’ve been doing this the wrong way, because I hadn’t really been looking to make an interesting or beautiful photograph. I’d been looking to make the literal photograph.

When I took this photo, I realized that I can do both at the same time. I can wait and compose and think and let the moment come to me instead of chasing it constantly.

After that, I thought very hard before I photographed something. What is going to be the opportunity here, what can potentially be the moment It changed from running and chasing things to waiting and thinking about what the photograph is or what it could be.

DESCRIPTIONLászló Moholy-Nagy, with permission of the estate of László Moholy-Nagy 7 a.m. (New Year’s Morning). Berlin, circa 1930.

Inspiration: László Moholy-Nagy, Hungarian-born photographer and artist.

Q.

Why did you choose the László Moholy-Nagy image as your influence

A.

When I saw that photo, it was like a bomb hit me. I’d never seen anything like that. I’ve always followed a lot of current photographers. I’d never looked at the history of photography. I’d never looked at Bauhaus or Dada â€" until the semester that I took a class, “Photography as a Historical Discourse.”

We looked at Dada and Bauhaus. These were people that were trying to literally tell a story, and they were expressing what they saw.

This photo, I thought, was so eautiful because it was just so simple. It was just these lines and these people walking towards this bright light. It was on New Year’s Day and has a feeling of rebirth â€" of a new kind of optimism.

Q.

And did this image affect your photography

A.

I put it in my room. It always reminds me to look beyond the literal.

Now, before I photograph something, I think very hard about how I feel about it. What do I think is relevant, what do I feel is worth conveying. I think very hard about the light and the background and the composition and what the people are doing with their hand movements â€" do they look away from each other or do they look at each other constantly

Follow @mando685, @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Fac! ebook! .



Looking Beyond the Literal

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Armando L. Sanchez is a 25-year-old freelance photographer who was born and raised in Austin, Tex., and is now based in Chicago. He studied photography at Western Kentucky University and received a B.A in interdisciplinary studie last year. He has had four â€" yes, count them, four â€" newspaper internships: at The Tennessean in Nashville, The Saginaw News in Michigan, The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill., and most recently at The Chicago Tribune.

His phone conversation with James Estrin has been edited.

Q.

Tell me about the photograph that you chose. What’s going on

A.

I had an assignment to photograph a Western Kentucky professor at a sailboat race. I was sitting on the edge of the sailboat, and it was raining really, really hard. I’d never really photographed in the rain on a sailboat on a river. And I was hanging over the edge of the sailboat and waiting for him to turn around, because he was facing the other way while they were heeling. And I just kept thinking, if he turns around, this will work, if he turns around, this will work.

Q.

Why was it a turning point for you What’s the importance of the image

A.

Well, before I took this I had three newspaper internships. And I had really focused heavily on photojournalism. I love photojournalism, I have a passion for it, that’s what I want to do, but that’s the only photography I had ever looked at. That spring, I started to look at the history of photography and I started studying it as an art form.

This photo was the first time that I didn’t feel obligated to make a certain picture that an editor wanted. I just looked for the most beautiful image that was out there. I tried to make something for me.

Q.

You felt a freedom to make your own image

A.

Before that I’d always thought of photography as a very literal thing, very documentary. You go to a scene and you honestly document what you see and how you see it. And you bring it back and it matches the assignment and it matches what the writer writes, and that’s what I saw as my place in the world.

Q.

How did this photograph change the way you photographed

A.

I’ve always been kind of scared to photograph for myself because I thought that I would miss something â€" what the paper wanted me to photograph. And that was the first time I realized that I’ve been doing this the wrong way, because I hadn’t really been looking to make an interesting or beautiful photograph. I’d been looking to make the literal photograph.

When I took this photo, I realized that I can do both at the same time. I can wait and compose and think and let the moment come to me instead of chasing it constantly.

After that, I thought very hard before I photographed something. What is going to be the opportunity here, what can potentially be the moment It changed from running and chasing things to waiting and thinking about what the photograph is or what it could be.

DESCRIPTIONLászló Moholy-Nagy, with permission of the estate of László Moholy-Nagy 7 a.m. (New Year’s Morning). Berlin, circa 1930.

Inspiration: László Moholy-Nagy, Hungarian-born photographer and artist.

Q.

Why did you choose the László Moholy-Nagy image as your influence

A.

When I saw that photo, it was like a bomb hit me. I’d never seen anything like that. I’ve always followed a lot of current photographers. I’d never looked at the history of photography. I’d never looked at Bauhaus or Dada â€" until the semester that I took a class, “Photography as a Historical Discourse.”

We looked at Dada and Bauhaus. These were people that were trying to literally tell a story, and they were expressing what they saw.

This photo, I thought, was so eautiful because it was just so simple. It was just these lines and these people walking towards this bright light. It was on New Year’s Day and has a feeling of rebirth â€" of a new kind of optimism.

Q.

And did this image affect your photography

A.

I put it in my room. It always reminds me to look beyond the literal.

Now, before I photograph something, I think very hard about how I feel about it. What do I think is relevant, what do I feel is worth conveying. I think very hard about the light and the background and the composition and what the people are doing with their hand movements â€" do they look away from each other or do they look at each other constantly

Follow @mando685, @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Fac! ebook! .



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