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Five months after Salman Rushdie suffered a near-fatal stabbing during an event at the Chautauqua Institution, in western New York, in August, 2022, he sat for a photo portrait by Richard Burbridge. In the resulting picture, which accompanied David Remnick’s intimate, forensic Profile of the author in this magazine, Rushdie—scars visible, one lens of his glasses blacked out to conceal his damaged right eye—gazes straight into the camera with a knowing glint in his good eye and a whisper of a smile. He looks not quite defiant but in waiting, as if to casually announce, Whatever else you’ve got for me, I’m ready—an apt embodiment of Remnick’s observation that, in the decades since the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, of Iran, issued a fatwa against Rushdie, in 1989, “He refused to be terrorized.”
From “The Defiance of Salman Rushdie,” by David Remnick.Photograph by Richard Burbridge for The New Yorker
In early June, when smoke from Canadian wildfires engulfed New York City in an otherworldly orange haze, Clark Hodgin set out to capture the eerie scene, for Carolyn Kormann’s first-person dispatch. Hodgin’s collection of uncannily beautiful images of iconic spots includes one in Central Park, where kids who have taken to the irresistible boulders appear frozen in amber, a cell phone in hand, backpacks and all. The image underlines the strangeness of that dystopian moment, which was surreal and oddly beautiful (as long as you didn’t inhale) yet deeply foreboding, especially for our youth, who are inheriting a world increasingly altered by climate change.
For a portrait of the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, Mark Peterson was denied his request to ride along with the Mayor—so he improvised and caught Adams as he swapped out his suit jacket from a makeshift closet in an S.U.V. The picture, which shows Adams flashing a smile for a passerby, serves as a superb entrée to Ian Parker’s Profile, which begins, “Mayor Eric Adams’s exuberant self-regard stops just short of biceps-kissing.”
From “Hive Mind,” by Sam Knight.Photograph by Alice Zoo for The New Yorker
From “How I Became a Vet,” by Rivka Galchen.Photograph by Shayan Asgharnia for The New Yorker
From “Trying to Breathe in a City of Smoke,” by Carolyn Kormann.Photograph by Clark Hodgin for The New Yorker
Among many other powerful documentary photographs this year are David Guttenfelder’s stark silhouette of soldiers on a wooded battlefield in Ukraine; Philip Montgomery’s instantly iconic image of United Auto Workers strikers in Toledo, Ohio; and Supranav Dash’s ingenious juxtaposition of a wizened goatherd and his flock ambling along a fence, behind which looms a vast sheet of solar panels in the Pavagada Ultra Mega Solar Park, in southern India. Carolyn Drake, who accompanied Paige Williams to Mississippi’s Neshoba County Fair, captured the legacy of a hundred and thirty-four years of history in her photograph of a sea of white faces in the fairground stands, ensconced in a joyful tradition that has roots in the state’s segregationist past.
From “Giving Away My Twin,” by Jean Garnett.Photograph by Justine Kurland for The New Yorker
From “Joyce Carol Oates’s Relentless, Prolific Search for a Self,” by Rachel Aviv.Photograph by Andrea Modica for The New Yorker
Remarkable portraits this year include Stephen Ross Goldstein’s stunning picture of the comedian Sarah Silverman, for an interview with Carrie Battan, taken just weeks after Silverman’s stepmother and father had both died: a queen of comedy who has dropped her beloved mode of mirthful incredulity, staring directly into the camera, her visible grief contained. The visual artist Shikeith turns a portrait of the painter Kehinde Wiley into something of a rapturous artwork in itself, depicting Wiley as the loving creator of both a cacophony of lush color on his palette and, in counterpoint, the delicate, precise brushstrokes of a painting in progress. Elizabeth Renstrom pinpoints Kate Berlant’s inner Kate, the alter ego that the comedian both explores and sends up in her hilarious performances. Rahim Fortune gives Samuel R. Delaney, the polymathic sci-fi author and chronicler of gay life, an aptly blurry-edged frame.
Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari created a cheeky portfolio to accompany Rachel Syme’s piece on the American designer Thom Browne. To evoke the ethos of Browne’s working environment—where all employees wear a requisite shrunken gray suit, known as “uniform”—the artists conducted a shoot in Browne’s New York offices, with Browne’s real employees receiving instruction from a model in a square top hat and fur: high fashion one step ahead and leading the way for the suits.
From “Trapped in the Trenches,” by Luke Mogelson.Photograph by David Guttenfelder for The New Yorker
From “A Mother’s Grief in New Haven,” by Nicholas Dawidoff.Photograph by Luis Manuel Diaz for The New Yorker
From “Behind a Locked Door,” by Margaret Talbot.Photograph by Laetitia Vançon for The New Yorker
From “Holly Herndon’s Infinite Art,” by Anna Wiener.Photograph by Carla Rossi for The New Yorker
From “When Stars Collide,” by Ottessa Moshfegh.Photograph by Gabriel Zimmer for The New Yorker
From “Woman to Woman,” by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers.Photograph by Shawn Theodore for The New Yorker
From “The Narrow Way,” by Liliana Colanzi.Photograph by William Mebane for The New Yorker
From “The Zen Wisdom of Sarah Silverman,” by Carrie Battan.Photograph by Stephen Ross Goldstein for The New Yorker
From “Eric Adams’s Administration of Bluster,” by Ian Parker.Photograph by Mark Peterson / Redux for The New Yorker
From “Among the Cabin Fanatics of Mississippi’s Giant Houseparty,” by Paige Williams.Photograph by Carolyn Drake / Magnum for The New Yorker
From “How Gretchen Whitmer Made Michigan A Democratic Stronghold,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells.Photograph by Paola Kudacki for The New Yorker
From “How to Hire a Pop Star for Your Private Party,” by Evan Osnos.Photograph by Victor Llorente for The New Yorker
From “The Transcendence of Laraaji,” by Amanda Petrusich.Photograph by Andres Serrano for The New Yorker
From “ ‘Summer for the City’ Kicks Off.”Photograph by Peter Fisher for The New Yorker
From “The Glittering Vultures of Ebony G. Patterson.”Photograph by Naima Green for The New Yorker
From “Kim Petras Wants to Be a Superstar,” by Kelefa Sanneh.Photograph by Marilyn Minter for The New Yorker
From “The Suitor,” by Rachel Syme.Photograph by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari for The New Yorker
From “Bravo in the Flesh,” by Doreen St. Félix.Photograph by Sinna Nasseri for The New Yorker
From “Will The U.A.W. Turn the Rust Belt Greene?,” by Dan Kaufman.Photograph by Philip Montgomery for The New Yorker
From “In the Cities of Killing,” by David Remnick.Photograph by Peter van Agtmael / Magnum for The New Yorker
From “How Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City,” by Julian Lucas.Photograph by Rahim Fortune for The New Yorker
From “Eurotrip,” by Carrie Battan.Photograph by Gareth McConnell for The New Yorker
From “Kate Berlant Has Nothing to Confess,” by Rachel Syme.Photograph by Elizabeth Renstrom for The New Yorker
From “Soak and the City,” by Rachel Syme.Photograph by Yael Malka for The New Yorker
From “India’s Quest to Build the World’s Largest Solar Farms,” by Meera Subramanian.Photograph by Supranav Dash for The New Yorker
From “Country Music’s Culture Wars and the Remaking of Nashville,” by Emily Nussbaum.Photograph by Ashley Gilbertson for The New Yorker
From “The Great Electrician Shortage,” by David Owen.Photograph by Eli Durst for The New Yorker
From “Colorín Colorado,” by Camille Bordas.Photograph by Ryan Frigillana for The New Yorker
From “How the Artist Kehinde Wiley Went from Picturing Power to Building It,” by Julian Lucas.Photograph by Shikeith for The New Yorker
From “I Am Pizza Rat,” by Han Ong.Photograph by Melissa Schriek for The New Yorker
From “How a Culture War Over Race Engulfed a School District,” by James Ross Gardner.Photograph by Janna Ireland for The New Yorker
From “Red Shift,” by Manvir Singh.Photograph by Kelsey McClellan for The New Yorker
From “The True Margaret,” by Karan Mahajan.Photograph by Eliza Bourner for The New Yorker
From “The Button-Pushing Impresario of Balenciaga,” by Lauren Collins.Photograph by Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker
Sourse: newyorker.com
