Welcome to a special, year end edition of “Chatting the Pictures.” In this webcast, we focus on three outstanding photos this year by woman photographers. In each 10-minute webcast, co-hosts Michael Shaw, publisher of Reading the Pictures, and writer and historian, Cara Finnegan, discuss three prominent photos in the news. The program is broken into three segments: “The News,” “The Look,” and “The Pick.” “The News” examines a hard news image for its content value. “The Look” focuses on a news photo for its artistry and style. And “The Pick” asks what made a high profile photo so unique to editors or the public. For “The News,” we discuss a photo by Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times. It documents a meeting on Capitol Hill on September 27th, 2019, between freshman Democratic Congresswomen from moderate districts, all with military or national security experience. Concluding that America’s election security was at stake, they decided to support the impeachment of Donald Trump. Ultimately, this meeting and that consensus tipped the balance for the historic effort to move forward.
Our photo for “The Look” was taken by Kholood Eid for a November 2019 New York Times story about child sexual abuse and digital media. When 7 and 11, these two midwestern sisters were sexually abused by their father. According to the article, many pictures and videos of them are still on the internet. We discuss how the embrace and the anonymity, the verticality, and aspects of the setting makes this widely-lauded portrait so powerful.
“The Look” offering highlights a photo by Pilar Olivares for Reuters. It shows a demonstrator taking cover behind a makeshift shield during a protest in Santiago, Chile, in November 2019. We discuss the photo in the context of efforts to classify the use of “less lethal” weapons (LLWs), such as water cannons, as torture; the impact of leaderless mass protests around the world; as well as the suggestive power of the shields and the cape.
You can find all the Chatting the Pictures replays here:
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