Sept. 27: Week in Photography
Your lens to the internet's most powerful photographs. 📸 MOST POWERFUL PHOTO OF THE WEEK 📸 Alex Brandon/ AP Images It's been a week of grief — for the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for the 200,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19, for the lack of justice for Breonna Taylor. It's all a bit much, and it is made more difficult by the fact that we are each weighing the significance of these events ourselves, our ability to collectively grieve as a nation is stymied. This image by Alex Brandon for the Associated Press begins to capture this sense of private anguish amid national events that feel both removed and immediate.
📸For Your 👀 Only: A LOOK AT THE NEW ERA OF ANTHROPECENE This week, BuzzFeed News released The Fincen Files, a series of stories looking at corruption and money laundering within the banking industry. Illustrating such a wide-ranging series was no easy task, but Alex Fradkin, an architectural photographer, rose to the challenge beautifully, creating a series of images of banks and financial buildings to help visually tie the series together and evoke a certain mood. Fradkin discusses his work on this project with us here.
How did you start taking pictures of buildings? My obsession with architecture has always inhabited my heart and mind as long as I can remember. I studied architecture in college and went on to a career in architecture for many years, a goal which I had been singularly focused on since I was 5 years old. It's not that I lost my love of the profession, rather I found something that I loved even more — photography. Alex Fradkin for BuzzFeed News My early years of my photo career were more focused on fine art photography, exhibiting in galleries and museums. My primary interest was in investigating, questioning, and exploring contemporary archeological ruins and the destructive tendencies of humans, neglect, hubris, and the effects of time, as they all conspired to inevitably reduce buildings to memories and eventually, oblivion. The FinCEN Files Project was a perfect assignment for someone with my kind of morbid fascination with the built environment where I got to explore the dark side of what architecture can represent.
How was this project similar to and different from your usual architectural work? I was given a great deal of creative freedom by the BuzzFeed editors, who were familiar with my previous works. They requested something a bit different from the usual architectural photography and encouraged me to explore a photographic atmosphere that supported the narrative of the forthcoming articles, which were focusing on the vast scale of corruption and greed of these particular banks.
Alex Fradkin for BuzzFeed News What was the biggest challenge with photographing banks? Can you talk about your approach? Well, let’s see? How to photograph the most nondescript and uninteresting structures that are, for the most part, devoid of any real architectural interest or features — basically monuments to banality. Interestingly, there was also a kind of disturbing sublime quality that began to emerge, which I found to be a little bit seductive, especially when I photographed at night, in the rain or mist — a kind of cinematic noir. An interesting juncture of beauty and banality on the outside, and intimating something darker, hidden and mysterious on the inside. This duality became a focal point for me when developing an approach to visually tie the images to the text. An atmosphere and emotion that I hoped would challenge our usual perceptions of what we think we know and assume.
Alex Fradkin for BuzzFeed News 📸THE WEEK'S PHOTO STORIES FROM BUZZFEED NEWS 📸 This week, we dealt with grief, from the passing of Supreme Court Justice to the denial of justice for Breonna Taylor. We will be back next week with a photo story roundup. HEARTBREAKING PHOTOS SHOW KIDS SAYING GOODBYE TO JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG Getty Images
DEVASTATING PHOTOS SHOW THE AFTERMATH OF THE OREGON FIRES John Minchillo / AP Images
📸SOME HOPE 📸 Ariana Cubillos / AP This spectacled owl is receiving care after falling from a tree in Caracas, Venezuela, malnourished. Make sure to feed the ones you love this week. "That's it from us this time — see you next week!" —Kate “Today everything exists to end in a photograph.” — Susan Sontag
📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by the News Photo team. Gabriel Sanchez is the photo essay editor based in New York and loves cats. Kate Bubacz is the photo director based in New York and loves dogs. You can always reach us here.
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