A Thousand Words: Photography at The New Yorker

FEATURING:
RICHARD AVEDON, RUVEN AFANADOR, MARY ELLEN MARK, GILLES PERESS, SYLVIA PLACHY, PLATON, ROBERT POLIDORI, STEVE PYKE, MARTIN SCHOELLER & MAX VADUKUL 

The New Yorker journal celebrated its a centesimal Anniversary in February 2025. For nearly 70 years, solely illustrations had been used for articles in the publication. In 1992, when Tina Brown was named Editor-in-Chief, she broke with custom by introducing pictures, instantly naming Richard Avedon because the journal’s first unique workers photographer and subsequently naming Elisabeth Biondi as its first Visuals Editor in 1994, the place she remained by means of 2013. 

During this time, 9 further people had been named workers photographers for the periodical: Ruven Afanador, Mary Ellen Mark, Gilles Peress, Sylvia Plachy, Platon, Robert Polidori, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller, and Max Vadukul. These ten artists are the topic of this exhibition, highlighting photos that showcase their groundbreaking work, which modified the visible nature of the journal. The chosen pictures additional function highly effective documentation of main moments in shared political, in style tradition, and social experiences of the time. 

In the next years, with the inclusion of the work of outstanding artists who got here to form the visible language of the publication, pictures turned an important a part of the id of The New Yorker. Since David Remnick was named Editor-in Chief in 1998, pictures has continued to be an integral a part of the journal.

“When The Church invited me to curate an exhibition, it was immediately clear to me that I wanted to use it an opportunity to document my time working at The New Yorker,” stated Biondi. “I believe that this was the most important work I’ve done in my career and am thrilled to share the work with my community here, as well as to invite others to explore the extraordinary photographers whose work will be on view.”

Featured right here, along with Richard Avedon, are works by Martin Schoeller, Mary Ellen Mark, Steve Pyke, Platon, Ruven Afanador, Max Vadukul, Gilles Peress, Sylvia Plachy, Robert Polidori, artists as numerous as the topics they photographed, every with their very own unmistakable imaginative and prescient: Schoeller, together with his hanging, typically hyper-detailed portraits; Mark together with her empathetic, humanistic narratives; Pyke together with his psychological research of artists and thinkers; Platon together with his iconic imaginative and prescient; Peress together with his highly effective picture essays, Vadukul together with his kinetic, cinematic photos, Ruven Afanador’s theatrical but stark and minimal portraits, Plachy together with her poetic eye; and Polidori together with his deal with reminiscence and area.

ABOUT ELISABETH BIONDI

Elisabeth Biondi has been an unbiased curator, instructor and author since 2011. Before she was the director of pictures of The New Yorker for 15 years, Stern Magazine in Germany and Vanity Fair journal in New York. Her unbiased curating consists of Subjective/Objective and Under the Bridge for the New York Photo Festival, the Steven Kasher Gallery, Beyond Words on the Howard Greenberg Gallery, Ullens Center in Beijing, and REFUGEE on the Annenberg Center for Photography. She was a decide within the eight-episodes Sky Arts ‘Master of Photography’, which aired in 2018/19 and she or he taught the yearly ‘Photography Master Retreat’ within the South of France. Elisabeth has been a resident of Sag Harbor since 1997.