Jan. 5: Your lens into the new decade

Jan. 5th: Week in Photography

📸Your lens to the internet's most powerful photographs 📸

MOST POWERFUL PHOTO OF THE WEEK

AFP via Getty Images

The new decade kicked off to a fierce start with tensions sharply escalating between Iran and the United States. The US Embassy in Baghdad was attacked by crowds protesting American airstrikes against an Iran-backed Shiite militia bases in Iraq and Syria. No one inside the embassy was injured, but the building was heavily damaged.

Chris Bensch, the chief curator at the Strong National Museum of Play, speaks with BuzzFeed News about the 2019 inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame.

FOR YOUR 👀 ONLY:

KILII YUYAN ON ARCTIC CULTURE 📸

Kilii Yuyan is a Seattle-based photographer who frequently travels to the Arctic to document the people and culture of the Iñupiaq. His work, People of the Whale, is on display at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins.

How did this exhibition come about?
Hamidah Glasgow from Strangefire did an interview with me and we really get along! When she was co-curating an exhibit of photography for National Geographic’s 50 best photographs (mostly from older white photographers), she wanted to have the other show at the gallery to represent a new face of photojournalism. I turned out to be a good fit for that show– being Indigenous I have a deep understanding of the cultures I cover, and can present a fresh viewpoint instead of the usual parachute journalist’s view.

Whats the most surprising thing that you learned about the Arctic?

The Arctic is not altogether that cold. Indeed, the way weather patterns work, coastal Arctic regions (where most people live) are often warmer than the continental midwestern US. But the quality of the light, the 24-hour sunshine or darkness, the vast wilderness, that’s what makes the Arctic like no other place on earth.

How has climate change effected bowhead whale hunts and the Iñupiaq people?

It’s starting to become a huge problem, but that’s also a matter of perspective. The days of the traditional whale hunt are numbered— as the ice gets thinner and the open lead of the sea ice gets bigger, the whales are migrating through too far away to hunt by traditional umiaq and hand-thrown harpoon. It doesn’t mean that Indigenous whaling itself will cease, thankfully, as that’s a huge part of the Iñupiaq identity and subsistence, but it does mean that future whaling will soon be entirely done by motorboat. There’s a bit of irony that the kind of tradition that Settlers endorse (beautiful skinboats and whaling parkas) will be undone by Settler-created climate change.

Is there one takeaway you want mainlanders or non-native people to have, looking at this work?

If there’s a single takeaway from People of the Whale that I’d like viewers to have, it would be to have a distinct sense of how different and how valuable Iñupiaq culture is. We live in a time when everything is pushing very quickly towards homogeneity, at the expense of the accumulated wealth of knowledge of indigenous cultures. All of these individual communities have solved the problems of life over thousands of years, in distinct ways. Because we don’t cherish diversity, that wisdom of varied and evolved solutions to life will vanish. At the very least I want people to see that there is no single right way to live in this world.

To start off the decade in high gear, Monica Nouwens takes us on a dark and gritty journey onto the streets of LA at night, and in current events, pictures from the ongoing bushfires in Australia and the Iran-backed riots at the US Embassy in Baghdad paint vivid portraits of stories that are sure to develop further in the new year.

Also, here are more photo essays published by our friends elsewhere.

LA AFTER DARK: WHEN THE CITY BECOMES ELECTRIC

SEE HOW DESTRUCTIVE THE US EMBASSY ATTACK IN IRAQ REALLY WAS

Ahmad Al-rubaye / Getty Images

The attack on Dec. 31st sharply escalated tensions between the US and Iran.

HORRIFYING PICTURES SHOW THE DEADLY BUSHFIRES IN AUSTRALIA

Sean Davey / AFP via Getty Images

At least 17 people have died and millions of animals have been killed as raging bushfires in Australia have burned over 19,300 square miles.

"Happy New Year from the BuzzFeed News photo crew. See you next week! —Gabriel and Kate

“For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke humanity.” — James Nachtwey

📝 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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