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Q. Sakamaki and the Art of the Socio-Photo-Documentary

Homeless people line up for food on Christmas Day at the soup kitchen at La Plaza Cultural, on Ninth Street and Avenue C. December 1987.

Lucy McKeon | Longreads | May 2015 | 15 minutes (3,806 words)

 

Photographer Q. Sakamaki was born and raised in Japan, but he moved to New York City in 1986, and has lived there ever since, covering the nightclub scene of ‘80s and ‘90s New York, documenting political efforts like the anti-gentrification movement, and capturing everyday life through striking street photography across the city.

New York is not his only focus. While Sakamaki has taken photographs around the world, from Burma to Haiti, China to Kosovo, Bosnia to Israel, Palestine to Liberia, and Afghanistan to Harlem, where he resides today—it’s his Instagram feed that has recently attracted many new fans. There, his daily, often-impressionistic images communicate a sense of profundity, even melancholy, in representing the quotidian.

Sakamaki’s photographs have appeared in books and magazines worldwide and have been the subject of exhibitions in New York and Tokyo. Among the many honors he’s received are four POYi prizes, two Overseas Press Club awards, and a first prize World Press Photo in 2006. He has published five books, including WAR DNA, which covers seven conflicts, and Tompkins Square Park, which documents the Lower East Side protests of the late ‘80s to mid-‘90s. Sakamaki is represented by Redux Pictures. We spoke recently about how he got his start and how he aims to combine identity with photography.

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I’ve read that you began your career in photojournalism covering the Tompkins Square Park uprising in New York City in the late 1980s—is that right? Did you take photographs even before that, if not professionally?

I photographed before, but it was more fashion photography [and] portraits. I was doing that and trying to get a job, when something started in the Lower East Side at Tompkins Square Park. It started before ’88, the summer of ’88, and then continued until the middle of the ’90s, depending on people’s definition of what is a movement. It was like a real melting pot, there. The only real melting pot I’ve ever seen in New York City. Not like here [in Harlem] today. But anyway, after [the Tompkins movement in reaction to gentrification and other labor issues], I decided I would like to cover more—I don’t like the term photojournalism. [We’ll return to this later.]

I used to be very political, when I was 13 or 14 year old. Then I loved fashion and entertainment in my late teens. So the Tompkins Square Park movement felt like something of a flashback. Until the mid-’90s I covered a lot of New York political movements, like the anti-gentrification movement. But then the Tompkins Square Park movement was gone—with Mayor Dinkins closing the park. People tried to keep it going, but in the mid-’90s, they couldn’t. So the mid-90s in New York started to feel very boring for me. I started to pay attention more to outside, worldwide. I went to many conflict zones, war zones—to Haiti, Cambodia, and Israel, Palestine, then Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia. Read more…

Educating the Imagination: Kenneth Koch on Poetry

Photo of Kenneth Koch via Teachers & Writers Magazine

I was brought up in Cincinnati, Ohio. My parents were very nice. The first time I wrote a poem, my mother gave me a big kiss and said, “I love you.” The whole idea of writing poetry had a lot to do with escaping, escaping from the bourgeois society of Cincinnati, Ohio, escaping from any society of Cincinnati, Ohio, and escaping from any society anywhere. The first thing I had to find out to be a poet at all was that there was a bigger world, a bigger world than that of my school and my parents and their friends. I had to find out that there was a world where people talked to the moon or said, “O wild west wind,” that there was a past that was more exhilarating and interesting than the Egypt and Ethiopia that I studied in fourth-grade geography.

Then, I had to find out that there was a bigger language than the one that I spoke and my friends and parents spoke. Instead of “Oh, there’s the most darling blouse down at Altman’s. Let’s go down there tomorrow,” I had to find out that you could say, “O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being.” I had to find out you could say, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment.” In saying so, I was lifted way above all these troubles of Cincinnati, Ohio, these troubles that seemed to be suffocating me though I had a relatively happy childhood. I had to find this big language with words like “impediment” and “wild west wind” and the idea of talking to everything. Then, I had to find some bigger poetic forms than I knew about, bigger poetic forms than nursery rhymes. I had to find sonnets, odes, and things like that. That was the first stage.

No sooner had I found all of these things than I had to start getting rid of them.

Kenneth Koch, in a talk at the Teachers & Writers Collaborative’s Center for Imaginative Writing in 1993. Published originally in Teachers & Writers Magazine in 1994, this transcript is now available in their online archives.

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Theorizing the Drone

Grégoire Chamayou | A Theory of the Drone | The New Press | January 2015 | Translated by Janet Lloyd | Originally published in France as Théorie du Drone by la Fabrique Editions, Paris, 2013 | 28 minutes (7,693 words)

 

Below are four chapters excerpted from the book A Theory of the Drone, by French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Dana Snitzky.

 

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Pattern-of-Life Analysis

Enemy leaders look like everyone else; enemy combatants look like everyone else; enemy vehicles look like civilian vehicles; enemy installations look like civilian installations; enemy equipment and materials look like civilian equipment and materials.

—American Defense Science Board

 

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How a ’12 Angry Men’ Parody Emerged from Amy Schumer’s Writing Room

Photo by Comedy Central


Each episode of Inside Amy Schumer usually contains a number of sketches, but last week the entire show was composed of a single extremely ambitious sketch. Bryan Moylan recently profiled Jessi Klein, the show’s head writer and co-executive producer of the show in New York Magazine. In the excerpt below, Moylan provides context for how the much-talked-about episode came together:

Tuesday night’s “12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer” sketch has a particularly incisive feminist tenor, though there are practically no women in the episode. Taking a break from their usual blend of stand-up bits, sketches, and interviews, the 22-minute-long parody features a jury deliberating whether or not Schumer is hot enough to be on television.

“Amy had pitched it early on in the season,” Klein says. “And then I got a text from Amy to me and Dan [Powell]: ‘What if we did that sketch as a whole episode, and we got amazing character actors to be in it?’ As soon as we saw that, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, that could be really crazy.’ So Amy wrote a first draft and laid out the bones of it. And we all watched the movie again. I had seen it more than once, but not in a long time, and I watched it again and took a crack at it with the movie fresh in my head, to shape it with as much of the movie beats.”

From there, the writers’ room had a go at it. “This is how we work on everything,” Klein explains. “Someone does a draft, then there’s another draft, and then everyone is in it. It took a village, in terms of the casting of it and the producing of it.”

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A Brief History of AOL

Photo by redux, Flickr

A short reading list on the many lives of AOL, which will be acquired by Verizon for $4.4 billion. Fifteen years ago, AOL acquired Time Warner for $165 billion.  Read more…

Will Technology Eventually Replace Marc Andreessen?

Photo by JD Lasica.

One challenge for Andreessen is whether venture itself has a skills problem. If software is truly eating the world, wouldn’t venture capital be on the menu? The AngelList platform now allows investors to fund startups online. Its co-founder Naval Ravikant said that “future companies will require more two-hundred-thousand-dollar checks and way fewer guys on Sand Hill Road.” Jeff Fagnan, of Atlas Venture, which is the largest investor in AngelList, said, “Software is already squeezing out other intermediaries—travel agents, financial advisers—and, at the end of the day, V.C.s are intermediaries. We’re all just selling cash.”

Andreessen sometimes wonders if Ravikant is onto something. He’s asked Horowitz, “What if we’re the most evolved dinosaur, and Naval is a bird?” Already, more than half the tech companies that reached a billion-dollar valuation in the past decade were based outside Silicon Valley. And as Andreessen himself wrote in 2007, before he became a V.C., “Odds are, nothing your V.C. does, no matter how helpful or well-intentioned, is going to tip the balance between success and failure.”

Tad Friend, in The New Yorker, on Netscape cofounder and Andreessen Horowitz venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

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The Rise of ‘Mama’

Photo: arileu

Elissa Strauss | Longreads | May 2015 | 15 minutes (4,006 words)

 

I first noticed “mama” while pregnant with my son in 2012. I was browsing on the internet—familiarizing myself the different types of mothers out there, trying to figure out what kind of mother I might become—when I noticed a number of alternative moms who referred to themselves as “mama.” This was the radical homemaking, attachment parenting, extended breastfeeding bunch, and “mama” was right at home with their folksy, back-to-the-earth approach to motherhood.

This use of mama can be traced back to women like Ariel Gore, who began publishing her alternative parenting magazine “Hip Mama” in 1993. Inspired by her experience as an urban single mom, the magazine became the source of parenting advice for riot grrrl types, tattooed and pierced women who wanted to find a way to embrace parenthood while simultaneously rejecting much of the bourgeois accouterment that comes along with it.

This fringe quality of “mama” stuck, leading to websites like the “Wellness Mama,” the home of a popular alternative lifestyle guru named Katie who is into stuff like, “cloth diapering, natural birthing, GAPS dieting, homeschooling, not eating grains, making my own toothpaste, drinking the fat and more.” For her, being a mama isn’t just about parenting one’s kids, but seeing parenting as a medium through which one can change the world.

“Here’s the thing, I can’t change the health of the world alone, but I’m absolutely convinced that as a group, women and moms can. … Not only are we raising the next generation, feeding them, teaching them, etc but we control the majority of food dollars spent around the world.”

She continues by explaining that being a “Wellness Mama” is a way for women to counter any criticism they might receive for being a stay-at-home mom. “I hope to make being #justamom just a little easier for you.” Mama isn’t just a pet name, it’s a manifesto. Read more…

Inside the Kris Jenner Playbook

Kris and her children didn’t do much press for Season 10, unheard-of for this family or anyone promoting a TV show, really. Call it an educated guess to say that perhaps they didn’t want to be asked about Bruce’s transition. But not because they were shielding Bruce, whom they love. It was not because he needed his privacy during this sensitive time, which was the reason so often cited in articles about the rumors that preceded the ABC special. Bruce picked up some lessons from Kris over the years: He has signed on to do a “docuseries” with the same production company that produces their show (though Kris is not involved in it). Bruce has no privacy; none of them do. That’s the deal they made with one another. When they’re silent on Bruce, they aren’t protecting him from the judgments of a cruel world; they are protecting Bruce’s exclusive. “I learned a lot from her,” Bruce said about his marriage to Kris, during the ABC interview. And so he did: He didn’t reveal how he looks dressed in women’s clothing in the interview or what his new name is. You’ll have to tune in to his show to see that. In the Kris Jenner playbook, you don’t give anything away.

And that right there is the hustle. What matters is not the revelation of secrets; who can keep secrets in this modern tabloid culture anyway? It’s the reaction to recently surfaced information — a father’s transition, a sex tape, a new husband’s crack addition, a boyfriend’s drinking problem — that are most valuable in this world. Kris Jenner doesn’t care that you know everything. What secrets can you “discover” from a woman who airs her daughters’ discussion of the size of their labia? Kris only cares that you heard them when and where she decided you should.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner writing about Kris Jenner in the New York Times Magazine.

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Finding a ‘Prepper’ to Go on the Record Is No Easy Task

Preppers are, not surprisingly, a paranoid bunch. Locating people willing to speak with me about their habits was more challenging than finding vegans at a gun range. After emailing a dozen members of Northern Illinois Preppers, a Meetup online community whose membership has grown from about 110 to more than 150 in the past six months, I received two responses. One was from someone who told me to take a hike (“I have no interest in being involved in your article. I also do NOT give you permission to quote me,” he wrote, which was perplexing, considering that no interview had been conducted). The other was delivered via a peer-to-peer encrypted email service:

“Due to OPSEC (operational security) and PERSEC (personal security) you’ll never see my stored materials. Though I personally take no offense at your question due to the nature of this interview the question itself is exceptionally rude in prepping circles. By way of analogy it’s the equivalent of my coming over to your home for the first time and, in front of your wife or girlfriend, telling you I think she’s hot and I’d like to see her without clothes. It’s simply not done. Any prepper who would be willing to show you their stocks, anonymously or otherwise, has violated so many rules they may as well just put their stocks on the curb for all to see and take.”

Rod O’Connor writing in Chicago Magazine about suburban survivalists.

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The Boy Who Loved Transit

Photo via mtaphotos (Edited)

Jeff Tietz | Harper’s | May 2002 | 35 minutes (8,722 words)

 

This essay by Jeff Tietz first appeared in the May 2002 issue of Harper’s and was later anthologized in The Best American Crime Writing: 2003 Edition. Tietz has written for Rolling Stone, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Livingston Journalism Award. His work has appeared in Best American Magazine Writing, Best American Crime Writing, Best American Business Writing, and The CAFO Reader. Our thanks to Tietz for allowing us to reprint it here. For those interested in an update on Darius McCollum’s story, see this 2013 The Wall Street Journal piece (subscription req’d).

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Before leaving his girlfriend’s apartment in Crown Heights, on the morning of his nineteenth arrest for impersonating and performing the functions of New York City Transit Authority employees, Darius McCollum put on an NYCTA subway conductor’s uniform and reflector vest. Over his feet he pulled transit-issue boots with lace guards and soles designed to withstand third-rail jolts. He took transit-issue work gloves and protective goggles. He put a transit-issue hard hat on his head. In his pockets he carried NYCTA work orders and rerouting schedules and newspaper clippings describing his previous arrests: for driving subway trains and buses and various other vehicles without authorization, possessing stolen property, flagging traffic around NYCTA construction sites, forging documents. He also carried a signed letter on NYCTA letterhead:

To: All Concerned Departments

From: Thomas Calandrella Chief Track Officer

Re: Darius McCollum Effective this date of January 10, 2000, Darius McCollum is a member of a special twelve member Special Study Group; and will analyze the operations of track safety and track operations. SSG will report directly to this office and will be issued all related gear for the respected purposes of this department and will receive assistance of any relating department.

To his belt Darius clipped a flashlight and a key ring the size of a choker. From this ring six smaller rings hung like pendants. Along the curves of the small rings, 139 keys climbed symmetrical and fanlike. Each key granted access to a secure area of the train, bus, or subway system of the New York City Transit Authority. The collection was equivalent to the number of keys an employee would acquire through forty years of steady promotions. Just before he left the apartment, Darius picked up an orange emergency-response lantern.

Six weeks earlier, Darius had been paroled from the Elmira Correctional Facility, near Binghamton, New York, where he had served two years for attempted grand larceny—”attempted” because he had signed out NYCTA vehicles for surface use (extinguishing track fires, supervising maintenance projects) and then signed them back in according to procedure. Darius has never worked for the NYCTA; he has never held a steady job. He is thirty-seven and has spent a third of his adult life in prison for victim-less offenses related to transit systems. Read more…