|
|
|
Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
Don't have an account yet?
Create an account '
Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more '
Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
Don't have an account yet?
Create an account '
Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more '
Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
Don't have an account yet?
Create an account '
Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more '
Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
Don't have an account yet?
Create an account '
Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more '
Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
Don't have an account yet?
Create an account '
Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more '
In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here. 
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from Zimbabwe, Syria, Russia and India.
Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.
In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here. 
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Young people sometimes look at the world with brash certainty, seeing only absolutes - stark blacks and bright whites. But time and experience teach us that life exists mostly in nuanced gray, and that ambiguity often provides insight.
For the photographer Bill Brandt, the reverse was true. His early social documentary work was rendered almost entirely in subtle midtones. It was only in his later, and more famous, nudes and landscapes that he made strikingly high-contrast prints.
To really understand Mr. Brandt's work, you have to turn to the original, vintage prints, and that's exactly the goal of “Shadow and Light,†a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. His photos were exhibited at MoMA in 1948 and again in 1961, but it was the 1969 exhibition curated by John Szarkowski that cemented his reputation as one of the most important 20th-century photographers. Until recently, the museum's Brandt collection was composed almost entirely of high-contrast prints made for the 1969 exhibition under the supervision of the photographer.
After he began making his dramatic prints in the early 1950s, Mr. Brandt would only reprint his photos from before and during World War II in much higher contrast, which radically changed their effects. But a recent acquisitions campaign by MoMA focused on prints Mr. Brandt himself had made at or around the time the negatives were exposed.
Bill Brandt/Bill Brandt Archive Ltd., courtesy of MoMA “Reg Butler.†Circa 1952.Exhibiting these images allowed the curator, Sarah Hermanson Meister, to connect what had seemed like completely separate silos of Mr. Brandt's work.
“If you're forced to look at the different sections of his work in isolation, it's difficult to understand the trajectory of a career,†she said.
The exhibition fleshes out Mr. Brandt's work with many images that are rarely shown, including photos from World War II that go beyond the images of daily life in London bomb shelters that were always included in previous retrospectives. Without the added context, it is easy to dismiss his early social documentary and portrait work as a prelude to his more influential work from the '50s, '60s and '70s. In reality, he would have been an important photographer even if he had stopped photographing before his nudes.
Bill Brandt/Bill Brandt Archive Ltd., courtesy of MoMA “Gull's Nest, Late on Midsummer Night, Isle of Skye.†1947.The volume of images in the exhibition and the accompanying book provides an opportunity to understand the development of Mr. Brandt's vision and his printing.
“Looking at the vintage prints, you begin to see a shift from the late '40s into the mid-'50s from very silvery tones, which even persist after the war, into the higher contrast, higher pitch of the work in the portrait of Reg Butler (above) and the portrait of a young girl lying on the floor in that interior (below),†Ms. Meister said.
By examining the prints closely, viewers can also see that nothing was off-limits for Mr. Brandt when it came to darkroom work. He would print something one way and then print it in a totally different way, recrop it and often extensively retouch. He would use a straight razor to cut, scrape and press the emulsion, a fine brush to apply ink or watercolor washes, or a graphite pencil to add or strengthen detail.
“While he could be remarkably uninhibited in his image revisions, at times he demonstrated a restraint and a lightness of touch that is almost invisible on his finished prints,†Lee Ann Daffner, a MoMA conservator, wrote in the book.
Later in his life, Mr. Brandt might have taken an existing print and rephotographed, reprinted and retouched it to attain the desired effect.
He certainly wasn't the only photographer to retouch images extensively or to mine different sections of the gray scale. But the wildly different printing approaches he took during his career made his work difficult to understand fully.
The MOMA exhibit, which runs through Aug. 12, is a tribute not only to the breadth of his work, but also to the primacy of the print - the physical object - in truly comprehending photographic artists.
“In the past, discussion of the dramatic evolution of Brandt's printing style has been relegated to the sidelines, and while it is necessary to value the nearly impenetrable darkness and muted tones 
of his early prints from the 1930s, it is not so simple to dismiss the forcefulness of his later interpretations as an aging man's bastard prints,†Ms. Meister wrote in the book's introduction. “Indeed, a significant part of Brandt's art is that the exposure of the negative was, for him, only the beginning. In many respects, each Brandt print is unique because the pervasiveness of his hand in retouching his work - to correct and to enhance, with a variety of tools - means that it is rare to find two prints presented in an identical manner.â€
Bill Brandt/Bill Brandt Archive Ltd., courtesy of MoMA “Portrait of a Young Girl, Eaton Place.†1955.“Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light†is on view at the Museum of Modern Art through Aug. 12.
Follow @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.
In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here. 
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from Zimbabwe, Israel, Ohio and Canada.
Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.
In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here. 
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}When she set out to take portraits in Kabul, Afghanistan, Marieke van der Velden started with a simple question:Â What is your favorite place in your city?
A question doesn't have to be complicated to yield a revealing response. The result of Ms. van der Velden's visit, “A Monday in Kabul,†is a vibrant portrait of a place so often represented by photos of aftermath - the shattered landscape of explosions and suicide attacks. When news comes out of Afghanistan, Ms. van der Velden wants us to remember those who live with the story.
And how they live.
Two years ago, she traveled to Baghdad to shoot daily life and portraits of Iraqis. Her project, “Baghdad Today,†was what Michael Kamber called “one of the most intimate portraits of Iraqi life to emerge since the 2003 American invasion.â€Â On that trip, she grounded her photographs in another basic question: How are you doing?
Marieke van der Velden “My name is Nafisa (second from left), I'm a TV presenter at Shamzad TV. This is one of the 43 commercial TV stations in Afghanistan. With my colleagues I make a children'•s program where kids can ask questions such as ‘Â"How do you become president?' The director wants more women working in media and we feel safe here. But out on the streets safety is still an issue; the nature of our work makes us a target for attacks.†Favorite place: the garden at Shamzad TV.Ms. van der Velden, 38, lives in the Netherlands. She first visited Kabul in 2005 for about 10 days, when she photographed a story about girls' education for Unicef. What she found was much different than what she was used to seeing in the news media. She wanted to learn more.
She returned in March of this year with her partner, Philip Brink, and spent about three weeks in the city with the help of a grant from Sem Presser Archive, a Dutch organization. This time, recalling how rushed her previous interviews in Kabul had been, she was determined to learn more about the people she photographed.
But in preparing for the trip, she was troubled by the simplicity of her question. Friends thought it was a bad idea. People are suffering in Afghanistan, they told her. They might not want to talk about such mundane things.
She had similar fears before her trip to Baghdad. “I was very afraid that it sounded too naïve to go to a country in conflict and ask that question.â€
But when she asked some Afghans living in the Netherlands what they thought about her trip, they were enthusiastic and shared contact information for relatives in Kabul.
“I thought: In Kabul, I will ask a new question, and I will ask a question where you can give any answer,†she said. Ms. van der Velden expected that while some answers would be enlightening, other people would be less open.
“And that is O.K. for me,†she said.
Answers varied, many likely influenced by the places the team visited. People told her they love the city zoo. They love the mountains behind Darul Aman Palace. They love Qargha Lake, outside of Kabul, where families ride a yellow Ferris wheel and men rent horses to ride along the beach. They love the swimming pool at the Intercontinental Hotel, where only men are allowed to visit. They love the land mine museum. They love their homes.
“I even love the dust of Kabul,†a woman named Roshan said. “This is where my heart is.â€
Marieke van der Velden “My name is Nilofar. When I was 2 years old, a Taliban rocket hit our house. I got a piece of shrapnel in my back that damaged my nervous system. That's why I'm in a wheelchair. Six years ago Afghanistan started an official wheelchair basketball team for women, I am one of them. In addition to law school I also train a lot. Â'As a woman, I have rights, absolutely. My mother taught me that those rights are not given though - you have to go out and get them yourself.†Favorite place: the basketball training center.When it came to finding subjects, she improvised. First, Ms. van der Velden and her team - Mr. Brink, who filmed the trip; their translator, Najibullah; and their driver, Zarif - went to some places that had been widely seen in the news media. While she wanted to avoid those stories, the visits led to introductions.
Najibullah took them to places he thought might top people's lists, like the zoo. Sometimes, they came across people on the streets. In a video Mr. Brink produced about the project, they chased down a woman who is behind the wheel of a red car.
“We just saw her drive by, calling behind the wheel, chaotically overtaking on the roundabout,†Ms. van der Velden explains in a voice-over, in Dutch.
Najibullah calls out to the woman from the passenger-seat window. She responds, nods and pulls over.
“That's how we make our appointments, honey,†Ms. van der Velden says to Mr. Brink.
The woman, Shakila, turned out to be a mother of 10 who runs a driving school with her husband. Her favorite place in Kabul, she told Ms. van der Velden, is behind the wheel of her car.
Not everyone was eager to be photographed. Many had trouble saying no, not wanting to be impolite. Some said yes, but later changed their minds.
Ms. van der Velden blogged throughout her visit, first in Dutch and later in English. She included photos, observations and answers to questions that friends, family and Facebook followers asked her to pose to the people she photographed. She could never say for sure whether the things people told her were true.
What surprised her was how many of her subjects spoke of the foreign news media's portrayal of Afghanistan. “Sometimes I asked the people: ‘What do you think the world needs to know about your country? What is important?'†she said. “And mostly, they said, ‘We have schools, and we're not the crazy country that is portrayed in the media like this.'â€
She hopes to return to Kabul after the elections that are scheduled for next April. Meanwhile, she hopes to pursue other projects inspired by one question, perhaps in Africa or elsewhere in the Middle East.
Her next question will be nearly as simple, she said, though somewhat less optimistic:
What are you worried about?
Marieke van der Velden “My name is Fatma, when I was 8 years old we fled to the Netherlands. My family still lives in Abcoude, but I moved back to Kabul permanently a year ago. Here I live with my grandmother and my niece in the flat of my family. During the week I have a busy job checking projects in the provinces. I see big differences with Kabul. Â'My family would like me to come back to the Netherlands, but here I feel like I can really contribute to my home country.†Favorite place: the house where I live with my grandmother.Follow @mariekevdvelden, @kerrimac and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.
Â
In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here. 
#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}Photos from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, the West Bank and India.
Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.
Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
Don't have an account yet?
Create an account '
Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more '
Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
Don't have an account yet?
Create an account '
Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more '
Log in to manage your products and services from The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
Don't have an account yet?
Create an account '
Subscribed through iTunes and need an NYTimes.com account?
Learn more '
A reader, Edward Hershey of Portland, Ore., wrote to me some time ago about an article in Sports by the basketball writer Howard Beck. Mr. Hershey, who described himself as “a former sportswriter in the Red Smith-Jimmy Cannon era,†wondered about Mr. Beck's use of a quotation from the Miami Heat forward LeBron James. It came deep within what he accurately called “a compelling deadline story following the first game of the N.B.A. championship series.â€
It read:
“You don't have no rhythm of what they're going to do,†James said before tipoff. “They don't have a rhythm of what we're going to do. So it's like the first test we've had with one another in a while.â€
Mr. Hershey asks a good question about what he terms “careless grammar from a superstar who clearly knows better, based on his next two sentences.â€
“Should Beck have cleaned it up, as we used to say after one of Mickey Mantle's barely decipherable observations, turning ‘no' into ‘a,' or would that have violated Times policy?†Mr. Hershey wrote in an e-mail.
The answer, according to both Mr. Beck and the associate managing editor for standards, Philip B. Corbett, is pretty simple. (I asked them both about this several weeks ago.) The Times doesn't change direct quotations and saw no objection to using the full quotation, as is. If that's the way the basketball star said it, that's how the quotation should read in The Times.
The Times's stylebook, a guide used by editors and reporters throughout the newsroom, puts it this way in its “quotations†entry: “Readers have a right to assume that every word between quotation marks is what the speaker or writer said. The Times does not ‘clean up' quotations.â€
The guide goes on to say that anything other than that â€" “approximate†quotations - can undermine readers' trust in The Times. However, it adds, “The writer should, of course, omit extraneous syllables like ‘um' and may judiciously delete false starts.â€
One way around this particular example was to paraphrase. That might have worked in the first part of the quotation, though something would have been lost, too. As it was, I don't think anyone would judge LeBron James harshly for his grammatical slip, as long as his midrange jump shot was working. (It clearly was in the N.B.A. finals.)
I appreciate Mr. Hershey's question, as I do all of what I like to call the “perfectly reasonable questions†that come my way from careful Times readers. I wish I could answer them all, but the volume of e-mails to the public editor's office makes that impossible. But, as I prepare to go off the grid on Friday â€" abandoning a laptop for a kayak â€" I hope to get to a number of them. Stay tuned for more in the course of the next couple of days.
As the famous line from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid†goes: “Who are those guys?†A version of that alarmed question sometimes comes up regarding letters to the editor in The Times.
A reader, John Hamilton of Shelton, Wash., writes to ask:
“What criteria does the New York Times editorial page use in identifying (or not) by profession, education, current or former employment writers of letters to the editors?â€
He adds:
I ask the question because there clearly are criteria being used. One can infer, from today's, Sunday's, paper, for example, that you identify people with legal backgrounds when the topic is legal. But doing so confers a degree of legitimacy on the views expressed (or seems so to me) that leaving the writer unidentified does not. It would be interesting to know, continuing with today's paper as an example, what John Viteritti's background is, or Dewey Klurfield's. For what it's worth, it seems to me that a better policy would be to identify each writer in some way that he or she had consented to.
I asked the letters editor, Thomas Feyer, to respond. He said that the policy doesn't amount to an exact science; there are judgments, not all of which are clear-cut. He wrote in an e-mail:
The criterion for an ID is relevance to the topic of the letter, or to show that the writer has expertise in the subject. Most times it's obvious: the writer is a doctor, lawyer, professor or somesuch. Sometimes the ID is included if we think it would be of interest: a high school student, for example. Sometimes it's included in the interest of full disclosure, when the writer has a financial or other stake in the subject.
But the general criterion is: Is the ID interesting, relevant or important for the reader to know?
The policy, Mr. Feyer added, “is simple, though in practice it's not always.â€
As to Mr. Hamilton's suggestion about identifying every letter writer according to his or her desire, the idea is interesting but probably impractical, since not only would it use precious space, but it also might be an administrative nightmare as editors tried to fact-check identifications and come to happy terms with letter writers about how to identify them.
I am answering questions from Times readers over the next two days. I wrote about the use of direct quotations earlier, and will soon get to a question about when links are included in articles, including the question of when the linked article or site includes offensive material that wouldn't appear in The Times.
A reader, Susie Reiss, wonders about the practice of inserting links in the online version of articles, finding it inconsistent at times, and mentioned a case in which references to some schools in an article included links while others did not.
She wrote: “What is the policy on inserting Web links? Do you think it is reasonable to link to some groups and not others in the span of an article?â€
Another reader objected to the link in an article on The Times's Web site Wednesday. The story itself concerned the spokeswoman for the mayoral candidate Anthony D. Weiner and her vulgarity-laced rant against a former campaign intern. The article described “expletives,†but the link within it took readers to an interview that detailed the rant itself, with some strong language.
Times editors have been thinking about this recently, as they prepare to update the stylebook. The overall idea, according to Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, is this: “We encourage reporters and editors to include links when readers will find it useful and interesting. There's no restriction on the number but too many can be distracting. It makes sense to be judicious.â€
Here's some of the language that will be included in The Times's stylebook:
If an article refers to material of interest to readers, like a Web site, document, image or video, provide an embedded link as a convenience. Readers also value links to background information and other useful content. When crediting a competitor, providing a link is mandatory. Test that all links are operational. While readers understand that The Times does not edit or control material found through external links, be mindful of our taste standards and generally avoid linking to strongly offensive material. Consult the standards editor or the news desk if there are questions. Generally avoid linking directly to the site of a specific seller for products including books, unless the Web site itself is the topic.
It's good to be consistent, of course, and the schools article might have done a better job with that, if all the schools did indeed have their own Web sites.
As for the article on Mr. Weiner's spokeswoman and other taste matters, Mr. Corbett responded, “We think readers recognize that when they follow a link, it's not The New York Times.â€
But, he said, good judgment should still prevail: “We would avoid things that are terribly offensive. We probably wouldn't link to a porn site or a horrible racist screed.â€
I've written before about The Times's conservative policy on the use of vulgarity and the lengths to which it will go to avoid it. Readers seem almost evenly divided on whether they would like to see the rules loosened or kept strict. The Times isn't looking for a vote, however; it is sticking by its strict standards.
A link can sometimes be a way to abide by those standards while still giving readers the details - if they want them.
I am answering questions from Times readers. On Wednesday I wrote about the use of direct quotations and about identifying writers of letters to the editor, and will later get to a question about the use of brands - iPhone, for example - in Times articles.
Dan Goldberg, who identifies himself as the user of an Android phone, thinks The Times is giving Apple some free publicity, and he doesn't like it.
Mr. Goldberg, a reader from El Cerrito, Calif., quoted from a June Travel section article in The Times in which the author wrote, “Before a recent trip to Europe I downloaded 10 of the apps to my iPhone.â€
Mr. Goldberg's e-mail to me posed the following questions:
Has Apple paid for this gratuitous mention-endorsement? Have New York Times employees been given free iPhones by Apple. Could “smartphone†have been used instead? In movies the studios get paid for such endorsements; does The New York Times?
I understand the reader's implicit point, but I have been assured that there is no financial relationship, like a “product placement†fee, at work here.
I asked Philip B. Corbett, the associate managing editor for standards, to respond. In an e-mail, he told me that The Times goes “to great lengths to avoid any link between editorial decisions and advertising.†The paper also tries “to guard against even the perception or suspicion of such a connection.â€
He wrote:
In a story like this - basically an advice story about using apps to book last-minute hotel rooms - it made perfect sense for the writer to be specific about the device he happened to be using. He also pointed out that most of the apps are available in Android versions.
In other cases, even if the specific brand or product is not crucial information, such details might add color or texture - perhaps a profile subject favors Gucci bags and drives a Porsche, or wears Levi's and drives a beat-up Dodge pickup. Substituting generic descriptions for the specifics is likely to water down the story rather than enliven it.
But whatever the writer or editor's reason for mentioning a brand, advertising or “product placement†doesn't figure into it.
I agree with Mr. Corbett's evaluation. While it's possible to overdo the use of brand names in articles, they often add personality and specificity to a piece of writing.
I am answering questions from Times readers. On Wednesday I wrote about the use of direct quotations and about identifying writers of letters to the editor. Thursday morning I took up Web links and vulgarity and will later get to a question about “NYT Picks.â€
Each weekday, about 10,000 comments from readers come to The Times's Web site. Not all are published but of those that are, some - perhaps 10 percent â€" are awarded a beribboned notation called an “NYT Pick.â€
Those picks have the aura of a gold star awarded by the teacher and are no doubt gratifying to the writers receiving them, but they sometimes cause disagreement among other readers.
One who wrote to me about this recently was Lauren O'Connell of Ithaca, N.Y., who objected to the recognition given to a comment on an editorial about the next Federal Reserve chairman. The comment said, in part: “I don't think that this is a women's job. And the reason is that to inspire confidence there is a certain degree of virility required.†It went on to suggest Paul Krugman, a Times columnist and economics professor, for the role.
Ms. O'Connell wrote that she found the choice to specially acknowledge this comment “alarming and offensive.â€
I have long wondered who “picks†the Times Picks, and based on what criteria, and this one was just egregious enough for me to seek out the public editor. Is The Times agreeing, via its “pick,†with the notion that the Fed chairmanship is not “a woman's job†and requires “virility� Perhaps the paper is agreeing with the suggestion of Krugman for the job, but to “pick†this misogynistic post is very un-Times, it seems to me.
I talked with Bassey Etim, who as The Times's community manager, oversees commenting. He agreed that this “pick†was not chosen well, since it seems to endorse a sexist point of view.
“Picking that may have been a mistake,†Mr. Etim told me on Thursday. “There are mistakes on NYT picks.â€
He said, however, that the choice of a comment as a “pick†is not intended to show agreement with the message. The picks are chosen to “give a range of interesting or thoughtful perspectives â€" kind of a Cliffs Notes version of the whole discussion that is taking place†within the comments on that article. That explanation will be added to the FAQs by the end of this week, he said, and it's been an oversight not to have it there previously, he said.
Sometimes, the picks can be used for a specific purpose. For example, to highlight location - on an article about Brazil, the picks might be given to commenters from Brazil, he said.
The picks are made by a staff of about 13 mostly part-time moderators, all of whom are journalists, he said, and reviewed by a supervisor to make sure that “there is a good mix of views.â€
“But they are not endorsements,†he said. Times bloggers usually do not rely on the moderation staff but do their own comment moderation and choose their own picks.
“Picks can cause consternation but I think they serve the reader because they highlight a range of opinion,†Mr. Etim said. “We favor literate, smart, insightful comments, and those that address an opposite or minority point of view.†Witty comments also are good candidates for the recognition, he said.
Like the reader, Ms. O'Connell, I've been puzzled by some of the choices I've seen, and always assumed a pick was, in some sense, an endorsement of the content.
For what it's worth, the public editor's office, though it once employed the “picks†system on blog posts and columns, doesn't do so now since it seems contrary to our role of representing all Times readers. We do read the comments carefully, and appreciate those who take the time to write.
This week I answered questions from Times readers. On Wednesday I wrote about the use of direct quotations and about identifying writers of letters to the editor. On Thursday I took up Web links and vulgarity as well a question about the use of brand names in Times articles.
And with that, I head off the grid for a vacation. I will be back in about 10 days.