Just Another Blog

Arlene Gottfried’s New York, Through the Eyes of Her Brother, Gilbert Gottfried

From the nineteen-seventies until her death last August, at the age of sixty-six, the photographer Arlene Gottfried combed New York City’s streets, parks, beaches, subways, and night clubs, in search of the shock of recognition one sometimes finds in perfect strangers. She understood the fractions of confidence and insecurity that make a public face. She liked sharp cheekbones and weird, pillowy proportions; she liked kids who comported themselves like adults, with laden, sphinx-like features. When Gottfried died, she left behind fifteen thousand pictures.

TOP 20 - March 31st, 2018 20) Kygo f/ OneRepublic - Stranger Things [Debut] 19) Kygo & Miguel - Remind Me To Forget [Debut] 18) Hailee Steinfeld & Alesso f/ Florida Georgia Line & watt - Let Me Go (-2) 17) Mau y Ricky & Karol G f/ Becky G, Leslie Grace & Lali - Mi Mala (+2) 16) Dua Lipa f/ Charli XCX, MØ, Zara Larsson & Alma - IDGAF (+4) 15) Jonalle Monáe - Make Me Feel (+2) 14) Charlie Puth f/ Kehlani - Done For You (+4) 13) Becky G. & Bad Bunny - Mayores (+2) 12) Eminem f/ Ed Sheeran - River (-1) 11) Tinahse f/ Ty Dolla $ign & French Montana - Me So Bad [Debut] 10) Khalid & Normani - Love Lies (-3) 9) Calum Scott & Leona Lewis - You Are The Reason (+3) 8) Bebe Rexha f/ Florida Georgia Line - Meant To Be (+5) 7) Liam Payne & Rita Ora - For You (-2) 6) Luis Fonsi & Demi Lovato - Échame La Culpa (-2) 5) Camila Cabello - Never Be The Same (+1) 4) Bruno Mars f/ Cardi B - Finesse (+6) 3) Zedd, Marren Morris & Grey - The Middle (-1) 2) Tinashe f/ Offset - No Drama (-1) 1) TINASHE FEAT. FUTURE - FADED LOVE (+2)

Searching for Memory of the Gulags in Putin’s Russia

Here are some of the things that you will not find if you go looking for traces of the Soviet Gulags: memorials at every known execution site, museums on the ruins of camps, accurate documentation of what happened to the still uncounted numbers of people who disappeared, a widely accepted story of the terror. Most of all, what’s missing is a reckoning, an attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible. How do you locate what’s not there?

The photographer Misha Friedman and Masha Gessen travelled in Russia in 2016, looking, as they put it in the subtitle of a new book, “Never Remember,” “for Stalin’s Gulags in Putin’s Russia.” They wanted to document memory—or the lack of memory. They began in places where Gessen had reported two decades earlier, when memory activists, then often with the aid of local officials, created memorials or museums. They wanted to see how those sites had changed in the twenty years since, as Joseph Stalin’s image was being burnished—to the point that he now consistently tops polls asking Russians to choose the greatest man who ever lived.