“Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive,” is a three-part exhibition of photographs from the Walther Collection, curated by the South African scholar Tamar Garb, with works that range from late-nineteenth-century photographs from southern Africa to pictures by present-day African and African-American artists. The final installment of the series, “Poetics and Politics,” is currently on view at the Walther Project Space, in Chelsea.

Click-through for a slide show of photographs from “Distance and Desire,” with captions abbreviated from the catalogue, followed by a Q. & A. with Garb: http://nyr.kr/10VCuoK

(Source: newyorker.com)

The Syrian war looks, too, like dusty shoes spilling out of a cardboard box by the open door of a deserted, partially destroyed home in a town that, like many, is devoid of civilians. The box is near a child’s black-ink drawing on the wall, of a helicopter. There are a little girl’s white sneakers with blue butterflies near a woman’s black wedge-heeled slipper, a man’s lace-up dress shoes, and a toddler’s orange patent-leather sandals. Things are in their place; their owners are gone. It also looks like things that are out of place, like a kitchen sink in somebody’s grassy, rubble-carpeted garden. The Syrian war looks like the millions of people who have become refugees or are internally displaced. It looks like others who say they’d rather die in their homes than live off of handouts in a tent…

What does the Syrian war look like? What does it sound like? Rania Abouzeid reflects on the past two years in Syria: http://nyr.kr/13YWmKL

Photograph by Moises Saman/Magnum.

A festival in Syowa Village, where, as a result of depopulation, a majority of residents are elderly.

Two years ago today, Japan was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami that killed over fifteen thousand people and affected hundreds of thousands more. With a magnitude of 9.03, it is believed to be one of the most powerful earthquakes to hit Japan. The disaster also set off one of worst nuclear crises in history: after the earthquake and tsunami, large amounts of radioactive materials were released from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, contaminating the city for years to come.

- Richa Sinha. Click-through for a gallery of photographs from the one-year anniversary: http://nyr.kr/Y508Oe

In Guillaume Bonn’s remarkable photographic essay “Silent Lives,” the relationships between members of Kenya’s white, Asian, and affluent black communities and their black servants are vividly and disquietingly examined.

As Bonn writes, “For a large number of Kenyans, employment as domestic servants underline the seismic disparities in a country where over fifty percent of the population live on less than a dollar a day while others reside in stately homes and colonial estates.” Bonn knows all about such awkward social dichotomies, for he is a product of them—he is a white African, whose great-grandfather took part in the French military conquest of Madagascar in 1884-86 and then settled there. Bonn’s grandfather was born in Africa, as was his father, and so was he. Bonn grew up mostly in Kenya. 

For a long time, Bonn said, he thought about doing a project on nannies. “I often wondered, all these years, what had happened to all the ones my parents had hired to take care of me when I was a kid. I realized that I knew nothing about them, and I barely remembered their names, where they came from and what their personal stories were.

…the employers and employees in this series [exist] in uneasily close proximity to one another, intimately bound but forever distant.

Click-through for a slideshow of Guillaume’s photos, and more from Jon Lee Anderson on this social dichotomy in Kenya: http://nyr.kr/ZdPlhH

(Source: newyorker.com)

The Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “can project the daunting stillness of a seated monarch,” Jeffrey Toobin writes in his Profile of Ginsburg this week. “She is tiny—about five feet tall and a hundred pounds—and her face at rest conveys a pursed-lipped skepticism. She dresses with a dowager’s elegance, often in exotic shifts acquired on her travels around the world; she sometimes wears long gloves indoors.” A groundbreaking litigator for women’s rights before being appointed to the bench, Ginsburg has worn many aspects in her eighty years. Here are photographs of Ginsburg as a girl in Brooklyn, as a law graduate who left Columbia as co-valedictorian (but with no job offers), as a young mother, and as an advocate whose greatest legacy, Toobin argues, may be in the cases that she argued before what was then an all-male Supreme Court—and won. Click-through for a slideshow: http://nyr.kr/W0Hkz5

“In Lebanon, Hezbollah is both everywhere and nowhere,” the photographer Moises Saman, whose picture accompanies Dexter Filkins’s piece on Hezbollah in this week’s issue of the magazine, told me. In addition to its military presence, Hezbollah holds a significant number of seats in the Lebanese parliament, yet “most of the leadership and the military wing live secretive lives and detest speaking to journalists, let alone being photographed,” Saman said. However, he was nonetheless able to capture its presence in his photographs of the villages and suburbs that surround Beirut. “The conflict in Syria has given weight to the clandestine nature of this movement,” he added. “Hezbollah’s direct involvement has led to new martyrs, who are buried privately and quickly, making this assignment that much more difficult.” These photos afford a glimpse of the rarely seen but increasingly present resistance.

Click-through for a slideshow, and more from Elissa Curtis: http://nyr.kr/13brcz0

Jessie Wender:

In the summer of 2010, Jonas Unger was commissioned by ZEITmagazin to photograph Gérard Depardieu at his château in the Loire Valley. I fell in love with these intimate, energetic photographs when I saw them, earlier this month. They’re an exciting way to see Depardieu—hair to the wind, flying on his scooter. Unger spoke to me about his experience photographing the French actor: http://nyr.kr/Yd27zN

(Source: newyorker.com)

As hard as it is to believe, Presidents’ Day is upon us once again. It seems like just yesterday I was shopping for myself at deep-discount sales in celebration of Washington, Lincoln, and other POTUS, past and present. This year, however, I’m thinking of giving a gift to the Commander-in-Chief instead. In case any of you are feeling similarly generous, I’ve put together a slide show of historical Presidential and Vice-Presidential gifts. It’s tough buying a present for the leader of the free world, but hopefully I can at least help minimize the embarrassment of giving something unoriginal, like another bust made out of cheese, or a pair of porcupines. 

- James Pomerantz.  Click-through for a slideshow of historical presidential and vice-presidential gifts: http://nyr.kr/12ShlOv

(Source: newyorker.com)

In the next few weeks, the cardinals of the Catholic Church will prepare for a conclave that will transform one of them into a pope. Early talk encompasses a wide range of candidates, from Milan and Ghana to New York and Argentina, challenging the traditional picture of the pope. But how much of that image is a retrospective one, shaped by the one we already have of the pope in his ceremonial guise? Are we so sure we know what any future pope looks like? Click-through to see the last half-dozen, photographed before they ascended—as a child, a young soldier, a priest shaving outdoors… http://nyr.kr/XxjFXd

(Source: newyorker.com)

Over the past ten years, Russia has seen a rise in domestic cults; the Russian Orthodox church estimates that over four thousand religious movements currently exist across the country.

Click-through for a selection of David Monteleone’s photographs from his time with the Vissarionites, a religious cult that lives in a community based in the rural Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, and more on the Vissarionites by Maria Lokke: http://nyr.kr/WCv0SB