July 5: Your lens to the interne t's most powerful photographs. 📸

July 5: Week in Photography

Your lens to the internet's most powerful photographs.

📸 MOST POWERFUL PHOTO OF THE WEEK 📸

Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

This is what democracy looks like. On one side, you have the organizations that enforce the current power structure — the police, the government — and on the other, you have the people; each side stands in response to the other. The people, seen here as messy, rowdy, colorful, and chaotic, have the power of numbers on their side, while the police, which have the force of structure and organization, are behind defenses, as if afraid of the people. It is important to note that the press is in between, as a liaison, an impartial observer, to hold each side accountable and make sure that the story is told accurately.

This frame was taken by Tayfun Coskun on July 1 outside of City Hall in New York during an occupation by protesters demanding that the NYPD budget be cut by $1 billion, and that the money be reinvested into community programs. While the budget was cut, protesters and some politicians say that it was a paper illusion, and that more work needs to be done to build a fair and equitable society.

📸For Your 👀 Only:

A LOOK BACK AT THE HOMELAND

Things feel fraught right now, but then, hasn't that always been the case? This week we spoke with Nina Berman, who has been covering the intersection of American culture and the military for almost two decades. Her work, which includes photography and the film Triumph of the Shill, is critical of the normalization of military force and the abuse of power within our society and begs citizens to pay attention.

WHAT PROJECTS ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?

My answer may surprise you. I have not been out on the streets every day photographing the protests in New York City. I have been feeling like this is not necessarily the story that I need to be telling, and I don’t want to be in the way of younger photographers, and Black and brown photographers, who might feel the urgency more deeply.

Instead, I am doing research for a story following up on the long-term impacts of military weapons testing and production. I will be doing a video and a sound art project on a particular location in August.

HOW DO YOU PICK YOUR PROJECTS?

Generally speaking, I am interested in how power manifests itself, whether that's military power, police power, a power involving perpetrators and survivors, corporate power, and how people resist. I’m also interested in how propaganda works and is used to manufacture consent and build support around sometimes preposterous ideologies. I have some ideas around police violence that are different from what I’ve done in the past, which has been attending funerals, protests, looking at stop-and-frisk, things like that, but weirdly these ideas don’t really connect so much to traditional still photography.

Nina Berman

I'm kind of frustrated by still photography — it’s beautiful and brilliant, but it's limited, and especially when you’re aiming to tell more complex fuller stories. If you look at my career, I think you’ll see a movement into video, a movement into combining pictures and text and documents.

For me, beginning in the analog world, and photographing magazine assignments and news using transparency film, it used to be really hard to make a great color in-focus picture. Now it's super easy to make a picture, it feels a little too easy. It might be one reason that I haven’t felt a need to be out there at this Occupy camp. There are tons of pictures, so I think that in some ways it keeps you inside a bit.

When I go to the Occupy camp at City Hall now, there are some things that are similar [to 2011] and there are some things that are new and different and super important, but just photographically speaking, the gestures, the crowds, the appearance, it's pretty much the same kind of language.

Does that really get to the root of the issue, which is we live in a city that is so policed, with a budget that is so bloated? Is that really how you tell that story? I don’t think so. I think there are better ways...but they have more to do with visualizations than photography just as the beginning and the end.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR THE YOUNG CREATORS WHO ARE OUT THERE NOW?

People become photographers so that they can live in the moment, which is a tremendous high and hugely valuable to you as your creation as a human being — to live, to witness, to see things in the moment. So they should go out and do that, but they should also understand the language that has come before them, so that they can be creative trailblazers.

I think that it is really important for a young person to develop their own language and style. They should know the history of the struggle that they are photographing and know the history of photography. Audiences know that history, and so they see a picture and they can connect it to something from the ‘60s or something from Occupy, so you yourself should also know that you are part of a continuum.

Nina Berman

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR PROJECT HOMELAND?

Homeland came about because of my inability to decipher what I was seeing and hearing as a resident of Manhattan post-Sept. 11. I was wondering, is it safe to take the subway, should I be scared or is there a terrorist on every corner and wondering where all of sudden these voices in my head were coming from.

I thought to myself, Wow, this is some deep propaganda laying down every day, and I need to find a way to photograph it, as personal therapy and also to look at this massive change in American society, where all of a sudden that people in these tiny towns were convinced that some terrorist was going to blow their town up and snatch their children. I spent seven years looking at this all around the country including how the military was spreading its tentacles into the police departments and into the social lives of Americans, which in some ways foreshadowed these days.

DOES ANYTHING GIVE YOU HOPE?

I don’t use the word “hope.” It's not really something that I think about. You’re expected to answer yes, but really, the answer is no. I am not hopeful. I am seeing a future that is going to be super deadly.

I will say that I am glad when I see people angry and out in the streets. I am glad by the new generation of political leaders. I'm glad to see these monuments toppled. I’m glad to see people asserting their power, and I also believe that the fascists in America are still a minority. This makes me feel like there is still something to fight for, that people are punching back, and that's good.

Nina Berman

ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?

There has been a lot of conversation around whether journalists should be allowed to show the faces of protesters, and there is this sense that somehow we journalists are putting people at risk. If there is evidence, show me.

Everywhere you walk in New York City and everyone walking into a protest downtown is being photographed by police constantly. They are the ones that are putting protesters in danger, not the journalists. I get that people are frightened, and I get that journalists can be sensitive, but this wholesale idea of we’re going to eliminate your face and then we’re all going to be safe is so misguided.

Social movements are inspired by the visuals of other social movements. When people started protesting in Minneapolis, people around the country started doing the same thing because they saw those pictures. And it was journalists who made those pictures, along with regular people, but journalists were broadcasting them constantly and telling those stories, so do not go and attack journalists or else you’re just feeding into the Trump machine.

📸THE WEEK'S PHOTO STORIES FROM BUZZFEED NEWS 📸

It's officially summer, albeit a somewhat weird one, with some states opening, some states closing, and no one much in the mood for the 4th of July. We're trying to balance serious news with some escapism, and hope that you're doing the same.

Find more of the week's best photo stories here.

DELIGHTFULLY ODD PHOTOS FROM FOURTH OF JULY HISTORY

Ralph Crane / Getty Images

HAUNTING COLOR PICTURES OF THE 1918 FLU PANDEMIC

Getty Images

📸SOME HOPE 📸

Oli Scarff / AFP / Getty Images

Oli Scarff / AFP / Getty Images

"That's it from us this time — see you next week!" —Gabriel and Kate

📝 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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