The New Yorker - Blog Posts

Photographed by Martin Schoeller for The New Yorker in 2002:

 "I was hired by the New Yorker in 2002 to photograph Robin Williams, and after doing my research what stood out most for me was that he was a very physical comedian. I came up with this idea to photograph him swinging from a chandelier in a grand hotel room. Most publicists shoot down these kinds of wild ideas, so I didn’t tell anyone what I was up to, but rigged up a chandelier at the Waldorf Astoria hotel for him to swing from. When Robin got there and saw what was happening, he lifted up his shirt and showed me this enormous scar on his shoulder. He’d just had surgery and couldn’t so much as lift his arm. He was so disappointed! He really felt bad about not being able to do it, because he loved the idea and really wanted to help me accomplish my vision. 

Unlike most Hollywood stars, he was unfazed by his success and position. He talked to everyone from stylists to the crew, to the hotel staff. We ended up asking a maid at the hotel to swing from the chandelier instead, and I asked him to just sit there and read a newspaper, which I think in the end was an even funnier, more unexpected picture.

[Follies Of God]

The New Yorker April 18, 1936 cover artist: Rea Irvin

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When women writers of my generation speak in awed tones of Didion’s “style,” I don’t think it’s the shift dresses or the sunglasses, the cigarettes or commas or even the em dashes that we revere, even though all those things were fabulous. It was the authority. The authority of tone. There is much in Didion one might disagree with personally, politically, aesthetically. I will never love the Doors. But I remain grateful for the day I picked up “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and realized that a woman could speak without hedging her bets, without hemming and hawing, without making nice, without poeticisms, without sounding pleasant or sweet, without deference, and even without doubt. It must be hard for a young woman today to imagine the sheer scope of things that women of my generation feared women couldn’t do—but, believe me, writing with authority was one of them. You wanted to believe it. You needed proof. And not Victorian proof. Didion—like her contemporary Toni Morrison—became Exhibit A. Uniquely, she could be kept upon your person, like a flick knife, stuffed in a back pocket, the books being so slim and portable. She gave you confidence. Shored you up.

—Zadie Smith on Joan Didion

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/joan-didion-and-the-opposite-of-magical-thinking

It is rarely the book you came to seek, but the book next to that book, which changes your mind and heart.

‘When A Bookstore Closes, An Argument Ends’ by Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker (June 12, 2015) 

‘Perfect Strom’ by T. Hanuka for The New Yorker, Feb 2014