In the Flash is a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography. To join the conversation

Every portrait is a fantasy. There is a Goldilocks sweet spot that I am chasing with my portrait work, a cross-pollination between the subject’s character and my subjective construction of it. The ones that are successful cohabitate a triangle in between the photographer’s vision, the subject’s temperament, and the viewer’s projection. The audience contributes more to the triangle when the subject is recognizable than when they are unknown and therefore a blank slate. Celebrity myth-making facilitates the photographer’s job, since familiarity jump-starts the fantasy regardless of execution. There are many mediocre photos of celebrities because it is easy to be seduced into false epiphanies by a famous face.

I’ve taken boring portraits of celebrities in the past because as a younger photographer, I was afraid to take risks. The pressure of photographing a well-known person is intense, amplified by the editor’s expectations and the limitations imposed by PR. All this, combined with a meager amount of time (I had five minutes with Ringo and thirty seconds with Wendy Williams), nudges the process towards the safe choice, which is a purgatory in between creativity and competence.

The safe choice is a well-exposed, easily read portrait that conforms to the existing stereotypes of both the subject and whatever trend in portraiture is popular at the moment. Publications are full of such photos, not just because photographers default to them under pressure but because editors tend to avoid making bold moves when working with celebrities. That makes its own sense. A safe photo has a safe track record and is more likely to please the bloodthirsty PR and allow a possibility of a future portrait. With a non-famous subject, more risks can be taken because the stakes are so much lower.

Which brings me to Sting.

Subscribe now

I had twenty minutes with the rockstar, a luxury of time in celebrity terms, which in a way adds its own kind of pressure. Two minutes gives the photographer the leniency to get one serviceable portrait and blame the lack of time for the lack of imagination. With twenty minutes, the photographer has enough agency to fail on their own. I was excited-nervous to work with Sting and brought my magic bag of tricks and an attitude that I would avoid waddling in the safety zone. But for that, I needed Sting to play along.

As per usual, I did my research and looked up as many portraits of the musician as I could find. What I saw alarmed me. Sting has the same stoic expression in every single photo, which made me reconsider the emotional range of possibilities. But to make bold photos, you have to make bold moves. I was prepared to test out if Sting was willing to play, so I told him that I was looking for experimentation and Shakespearean drama. Without skipping a beat, Sting launched into “Now is the winter of my discontent,” the brilliant monologue from Richard III, adorned by cheekiness and gesticulation.

As we were just getting to know one another, Sting commented on my canvas bag with the face of Scott Walker, one of mine, and as it turned out, Sting’s favorite musicians. This musical connection set the tone for the rest of the shoot, and more than any request to channel Shakespeare, it was our shared love of Scott Walker that let Sting understand the strange, emotional register I was after.

Scott Walker is the most famous non-famous musician, or as he is often described, a musician’s musician. Walker’s star-studded fan club includes Thom Yorke (Radiohead), Jarvis Cocker (Pulp), Nick Cave, Brian Eno and, as I found out in person, Sting. Another rockstar who both idolized Walker and tried to emulate him in his own music is David Bowie. Bowie’s more experimental, darker songs like The Motel, Heat, and, arguably, his final, brilliant epitaph of an album, Blackstar, were him channeling Walker.

Scott Walker is virtually unknown among the general public because his later music is unrecognizable in the pop and rock landscape, atonal, evocative, and at times brutal. His career was unique and schizophrenically varied, starting from the sunny pop of the 1960s Walker Brothers, a band whose popularity was briefly compared to the Beatles and which was the most famous moment of his long career. In the late 60s, Walker released four albums in which he explored the chanson legacy of the Belgian musician Jacques Brel and wrote some of his most beautiful songs. After that, Walker went on a musical rampage, derailing his pop career in favor of pushing past the boundaries of music, an act of commercial self-sabotage that Bowie had this to say about:

“He really didn't want to abide by the rules of the genre. He kind of opted out of rock very early on in his career. It just seems he wanted to expand in some very unusual ways. And that was pretty much what I wanted to do. And it was always guys like that that I admired.”

Walker’s 1978 song, The Electrician, was the beginning of this latter “dark” stage (it is a song about a CIA torturer), solidified by two groundbreaking, experimental, and, to many people, unlistenable albums, Tilt (1995) and The Drift (2006), effectively cancelling Walker for any listener who was not, in some form, deranged. Walker redefined the tonal quality of music, using his operatic voice to push it further than anyone who came before him, and inspiring another Bowie quote commenting on musicians’ (and his own) tendency to conform to the public’s taste:

“He’s true to himself, whereas other artists are traitors to themselves.”

This last quote is why I spent the last three paragraphs of a photography newsletter talking about Scott Walker. A decade of working with publications and engaging with social media has narrowed my portraits towards competence. Whenever I look through old assignments, I see a few jagged experiments hidden among all the competent images, but since those photos were never chosen for publication, their number would get less and less over the years.

The lack of reward can shape a photographer’s style in an insidious way, skewing the work towards the accolades of acceptance. The breaking point for me was when I photographed a well-lit and staggeringly boring cover of ESPN, and I have been trying to find my way back since. That was also around the time that I discovered Scott Walker through the documentary 30 Century Man, which let me fall in love with the idea of him even before I fell in love with the music.

Back to Sting.

After our brief Scott Walker exchange, Sting seemed to become more engaged and playful, taking initiative instead of waiting for direction, as we both moved through the Met in a seamless dance of call-and-response. My camera and Sting were in sync, which allowed for surprises that are hard to get in an over-directed shoot where the subject only does what the photographer asks of them. In the end, Sting told me he had a good time, which was more than I hoped, since at the start of our shoot, he confessed that he dislikes being photographed.

Inspired by the shoot at the Met, I rewatched 30 Century Man, the Scott Walker documentary, and was surprised to see Sting briefly appear in the film among all the other rockstars gushing about the musician. It felt like a full circle, and I edited the portrait shoot thinking about the strange connections and listening to the wonderful music of both Walker and Sting (my favorite song, Fragile, has been on repeat since the shoot).

I loved the portraits that came out because I’ve gotten past the autopilot into something more playful and silly. “Silly" is a term that would give me the heebie-jeebies when all I was aiming for was high-minded, serious work, but it's impossible to experiment if you are always expecting good results. Boring photos stop where the danger zone of sucking begins.

None of those silly portraits were chosen in the final edit, but this time it wasn’t discouraging. The line between creativity and gimmickry is tricky to navigate, especially when testing out new ideas, but I am learning not to be afraid of failing. It's not easy, and I have been mustering the confidence and ambition to be more Scott Walker, and to keep my voice from blending into the general mush of visual trends.

I made a Spotify playlist of my favorite Scott Walker songs, mostly from his earlier, melodic work, but squeezing in a few of the less brutal tracks from The Drift and Tilt, just to give an idea.

Sting, for New York Magazine, by Devon Ivie.

Find me on Instagram

In the Flash is a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

Pennsbury Prom was scheduled to end at midnight, but by 11pm, the space has all but cleared out. The exodus began as the prom’s celebrity headliner, the Plain White Ts, were finishing Hey There Delilah, a song that peaked before any of the students were born. Its final chords were still echoing through the hall as a wave of silk dresses and disheveled suits poured out of the auditorium, with just a handful of girls staying for the encore. The band looked peeved. It was a jarring end to a night that began nine months prior, when Pennsbury High School started its Olympic-level preparations for what has been dubbed the “Best Prom in America”.

Photographing a prom has been on my dream list for years, and last May I finally got to do that for Philly Mag. This was my first time attending a prom, since I skipped my own festivities when I graduated from Brooklyn Tech High School. My friends were a group of metalheads, goths, and punks, and attending a socially conformist ritual was not acceptable behavior for our rebellious clique. Since I was also a raging introvert, there was zero regret at missing the event. But that isn’t the full story. The idea of the prom enters an American child’s bloodstream around first grade, while I didn’t find out about it until my mid-teens. I understood it just enough to rebel against it, but its symbolic importance didn’t hit me until much later. It wasn’t until I picked up the camera and got interested in social rituals that I looked back at that decision with a hiccup of regret.

Twenty five years later, the universe arranged a correction. My assignment was not just a prom, but a prom on steroids, the prom of all proms, the most exciting graduating spectacle in the US. Whether or not it is the best prom in America, of course, is contentious and remains a self-replicating PR loop. Pennsbury was christened “Best Prom” by Reader’s Digest in 2004, a consequence of then-rising John Mayer playing in the school gym in 1999 and other illustrious acts, like Questlove, following suit. Since then the catchy title stuck, and the high school has been eager to keep it relevant, with the entire community terrified of waking up one spring morning to discover its prom merely above average. To make sure that doesn’t happen, the 2025 prom theme was marketed as “Prom to the Myth: Myths, Magic, and Memories: The Best Prom in America.” Who can compete with that?

Cynicism aside, the feverish dedication of the Pennsbury prom committee and the sheer scale of the preparations were marvels of craft and ambition. I arrived at the school one day before the festivities to witness the frantic, last-minute work as junior-year students (seniors are not allowed to participate in the build), parents and teachers put the finishing touches on every wall, nook and crevice of the building. Besides hand-painted murals, there were kinetic sculptures like a life-sized dragon gliding back and forth across the gym’s ceiling and a giant boat hoisted to the ceiling. Though I am generally allergic to communal activities, I felt myself get emotional at the creative and cozy atmosphere, the hustle and bustle that transformed a regular school building into a magical stage for the most American of all the American rituals.

The prom began with the float parade and a red carpet entrance, a ceremony cosplaying the Met Gala and which felt like the main event of the night. Surrounded by cheering parents, the seniors were unloaded from the decorated floats in all their dressed-up glory as the school photographer flashed them with the intensity of two paparazzi, delighting the excited arrivals. My own camera and an assistant holding a strobe added to the glamour of this well-orchestrated spectacle. Each student was treated as a celebrity as they glided and waved across the red carpet into the festive universe of global mythologies.

Despite being advertised as the climax of teenagehood, prom boils down to one fun night. The pressure to have a great time can be overwhelming, and I could feel the facade crack as 745 students filed inside the high school, a process that took a couple of hours. By the time the last person entered, the energy of the crowd had curdled into restlessness. Peripatetic seniors stumbled from dinner in the cafeteria to the dance party in the gym, some enthusiastic, others deadpan, and many glued to their smartphones.

Teenagers surrounded by immersive murals while being immersed in their phones cannot escape the hint of generational critique, but I managed to avoid my prom by simply not going, so seniors escaping into their phones did not seem like a sign of societal collapse. Instead, it is a reflection of the prom itself, an idea blown out of proportion to become an indelible part of the American dream.

The gap between fantasy and experience of the prom is closed after the fact by photography, social media, and nostalgia. As the students took selfies, and the school photographer posed them on the red carpet, a visual narrative of the prom conformed to its sparkly promise. Because I was focusing on the moments in between the celebratory polish, my camera became the only clog in the myth-making machine.

Finding unguarded moments at Pennsbury was by far the most difficult part of the shoot. Trying to catch Gen Z unaware of the camera turned out to be exasperating. I pride myself on being a fast and stealthy shooter, but here I was outwitted by teenagers with a highly developed sense of photographic awareness. Students would spot my camera from across the room, and by the time I could compose a shot, they were already composed and smiling for the camera. I had to change my usual methods of fly-on-the-wall-with-a-flash, to both allow room for environmental portraits and get stealthier in order to catch any candids at all. When I did manage to do so, the seniors would look puzzled and, in some cases, less than amused. It was tricky to reconcile that making psychologically layered photos of the prom that exposed teenage vulnerability and awkwardness was exactly what unsettled the students used to controlling their own visual narrative.

My general rule during editing is to not use any photos that embarrass the subject, and with the prom I was especially wary of doing so. The line between awkwardness and embarrassment, especially when photographing teenagers in social settings, is both vital and sometimes blurry. I try to imagine myself in the situations I’ve photographed and to think about whether the photos will age well by adding context or whether their only purpose is to fatten the photo essay with pretty pictures. Only the passing of time will confirm to me if I succeeded.

As I was putting together the edit, I was thinking about the ritual of the prom. The Pennsbury committee, working since September on hand-painted murals and kinetic dragons, was not just putting on a party. They were producing a spectacle of American folklore, meant to be photographed, circulated, and reposted, reinforcing a fairly recent tradition that has become a punctuating milestone of growing up.

But this is the macro view, for which a camera is a poor instrument. I keep the opposite in mind when I photograph, an old urban, slightly cheeky phrase of “think globally, act locally.” The most fascinating part of the prom was the chance to observe so many strangers at the very beginning of their adulthood, each with their own micro-dramas and relationships, capable of both having a cathartic experience and being a bit bored at times. And despite stretches of disengagement and the mass abandoning of the prom before midnight, it looked like everyone had a really, really good time.

To read the story,

Inside Pennsbury High’s Legendary Prom: The Most Epic School Dance in America, by Emily Goulet

The story wouldn’t have happened without Jamie Leary, a photo editor and Design Director of Philly Mag.

Before setting out to Pennsbury, I looked up as many photo series on the prom as I could find. Here are a few of my favorites.

Mary Ellen Mark, Prom, 2012

Gillian Laub, Southern Rites, 2019

Ken Graves & Eva Lipman, Prom, 1990-94

Maggie Shannon, Pandemic or Not, Proms Are Back, 2021

Find me on Instagram

Welcome to In the Flash, a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography.

Subscribe now

I spent most of April on a plane, zigzagging between New York, Nashville, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Dallas, photographing a portfolio for the New York Times Magazine Health and Longevity issue. My subjects were six professional athletes still at the top of their game in their late thirties and forties, redefining a sports culture that long treated thirty as the beginning of physical decline. A high-tech ecosystem of recovery methods and new approaches to diet, fitness, and lifestyle have pushed the ceiling into territory that, a decade ago, would have sounded like science fiction.

Every athlete in the story represents a different sport, so the training and recovery methods varied from person to person. I visited a hockey rink with Hilary Knight and accompanied W.N.B.A. forward Alysha Clark to a basketball practice, cryo, and red light therapy. I photographed Elana Meyers Taylor, who is the oldest woman ever to win an individual gold at the Winter Olympics this past February, and in monobob, one of the most punishing of all the bobs. The sport demands superhuman strength since it is a single-person event in which the athlete does everything herself; sprinting the start, driving, and braking. In Dallas, Atlanta Falcons Nick Folk practiced kicking before exercising in his garage gym, while Texas Rangers outfielder Andrew McCutchen visualized the game in a hotel mirror after an intense workout. Lindsey Vonn was also part of the story, but because of a recent injury, she could only sit for a studio portrait.

I shaped the feature around two existential narratives that became the spine of the story: dystopian-tinged sci-fi sprinkled with religious exaltation. Together, they pulled the work into a surreal dimension where Ponce de Leon’s fountain of youth is refracted through the high-tech futurism of longevity interventions, one baby step closer to the myth of eternal life.

TRAINING

Both Nick and Elana showed me Sisyphus-esque training exercises that require a silly amount of strength. While Nick practices in the privacy of his backyard, Elana pushes her family’s SUV down the street, a sight sure to delight the neighbors of an otherwise ordinary residential block. I wanted her photos to communicate the quirkiness of this method, but capturing it was an ordeal of its own.

Sometimes I know exactly what angle, distance, and framing will infuse a photo with meaning, but in this instance, I was unsure how best to compose the shot to give the photos both intensity and context. I problem-solve situations like this by shooting as many angles as possible and let the answer come through in the edits. I tried everything: verticals, horizontals, stepping back to see the whole SUV, stepping in to just get Elana’s face, creating a reflection of her face in the bumper, shooting from high, and then lying on the ground. Lighting was an issue at first, with Elana’s face staying in shadow, which was solved by placing one strobe in the back seat of the SUV, right up against the window, and a second strobe held by my assistant on the side.

I thought the graphic reflection would make the edit, but a horizontal photo giving more context to the size of the SUV and showing the residential street with Noah running in the background got chosen instead. I tend to get hung up on details, and in this photo, the two crosses on the houses echo the religious exaltation that’s the glue holding the portfolio together.

WORKOUTS

Every athlete on the list trains with weights, and almost all of them agreed to be photographed doing it. The tricky part was finding new angles in identical-looking gyms with identical equipment. After much experimenting, my favorite ended up being Andrew’s portrait between the massive dumbbells, a difficult shot that required manual focus and fast framing.

The one photo I wish had made the edit was Elana lifting weights with Noah hanging on the bar behind her. I understand why it was redundant in the story, but sometimes an edit feels like a guillotine, chopping away favorite images for the sake of a coherent narrative.

Read more

Welcome to In the Flash, a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography.

Subscribe now

Though I have chosen the documentary route for myself, my favorite photographers are Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, both famous and infamous for their fashion work. The latter comes from them often being posthumously called out as misogynist, a label I vehemently disagree with. But more on that in a different newsletter.

I have always looked at the fashion landscape with fear and envy. For a long time I thought that being able to construct intricate studio lighting was what made a great fashion photographer. Yet, I have seen plenty of people who combine intimidating strobe setups with lackluster photos. So if it's not the lighting, what is it?

Unlike documentary photography, with its many codes and regulations, fashion photography is the wild west of techniques and experimentation. Despite that, imagination is where many images fail. They get stuck in a glamor loophole of identical-looking models with the same sour, deadpan expressions and perfect lighting emphasizing emotional flatness. The risks Newton and Bourdin took, though not gone, since their concepts are cannibalized by nearly all fashion photographers, are largely hushed over. My biggest gripe with fashion photos is when, despite all the creativity available to them, they fail to transport me into a world of whimsy and desire.

A year ago I got the chance to work with a few fashion designers and make my first baby steps into fashion work. I haven’t shared the images because I wasn’t ready to commit to them. In the world of limitless possibilities, my documentary roots keep dragging me to the familiar safety of rules and reality, and I wasn’t sure where I wanted fashion to take me. Like with any other genre, whether documentary or portraits, it takes years to develop a visual language. With fashion, I am roughly at the level of my six-year-old nephew, who has the vocabulary but not the fluency needed for complex conversations.

To fight my documentary presets, I have acquired a magic bag of tricks to distort things in camera, a tactic that keeps me grounded before I step into the abyss of digital experimentation. Prisms, mirrors, plastics, projectors, gobos, gels, and cut-outs, all things I used to consider gimmicky, are ridiculously fun to use for both portraits (in moderation) and fashion (without moderation).

Retouching in fashion is both delightful and difficult. I can finally clone out things! Add elements! Change colors! To a documentary photographer, that feels like a feast after a lifelong fast. The dizzying infinite possibilities can also feel more constricting, because it's hard to decide what not to do. As my favorite quote from Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus goes, "'Everything is permitted' does not mean that nothing is forbidden."

A year ago, I did a collab with fashion designer Prabal Gurung to photograph his gorgeous designs right before the Met Gala. I worked with Tessa Thompson, Nicole Scherzinger, Precious Lee, and Shakira. Each shoot was fast, no more than 20 minutes in a small hotel room. I used my bag of tricks to create images out of context and build a different environment for each person. I had a vague idea of where I wanted to go based on the emotional register of the outfits, but the final portfolio was ironed out in post-production.

I didn’t share these images because I wasn’t ready for anyone’s input or criticism. When the work is still fresh and raw, a single discouraging word can make me run back to the comfort of documentary and abandon any silly endeavors. A year later, I am finally more or less comfortable with the shape my vision is taking when it comes to editorial fashion imagery, so I will be publishing them, one portfolio at a time.

Tessa Thompson was probably the easiest of the four to work with. The outfit was so playful and surreal that it crystallized my ideas faster than the others. My first instinct was a psychedelic Alice in Wonderland, but I wanted to keep the colors lean and bring in one red point of focus. A strange inspiration from the world of trash polka tattoos, with their distinct high-contrast red and black ink, helped create the universe for Tessa to live in.

I have found it useful to put all the images side by side when building a portfolio. I like to start with two images as a foundation, then bring in more photos. That helps keep the portfolio in a balanced emotional frequency and ensures it’s neither too monotone nor too jagged. For example, I really wanted to fit the motion blur portrait in, but I couldn’t get it to work with the rest because it felt repetitive.

Instead, I went with this one. I was seduced by the deep red, echoing my love of film director’s Wong Kar-wai luscious textures.

Stay tuned for Nicole, coming up next.

Find me on Instagram @dina_litovsky

Welcome to In the Flash, a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography.

Subscribe now

This is an updated version of an older article published on Bulletin.

I am quite allergic to the heroic photographer shot, which is any photo of myself holding a camera and looking serious, but I needed one to advertise my newsletter. After agonizing about the choice of a photo, I decided that the proper way to introduce myself to new readers had to be an image where my vocation is clearly readable, so I used this snapshot taken while on an assignment in Hawaii.

The comments that I received under this image reminded me that I should never take my mostly positive experiences as a woman photographer for granted. Many noted I was holding the camera wrong and doubted that I was, in fact, a photographer. Others thought I was photoshopped onto the lava background. And some inquired if I had an OnlyFans page. “The lava is hot and so is she,” was one of the more anodyne examples of such commentary. Needless to say, all of these were left by men.

My inbox was flooded with messages as well, from a simple “Hi, honey can we chat,” to actual dick pics (didn’t realize that was still a thing). I was left incredulous that this particular photo could provoke such misogyny. I’ve had a few amusing incidents in the past, like being asked in Adorama, a famous New York camera equipment store, if I photograph babies or weddings, which were the only possibilities the well-meaning gentlemen working there could imagine for me. Or having my mostly male assistants asked questions as if they are the photographer, even while I am the one holding the camera. Redirecting attention in these situations is equal parts funny and infuriating.

On a few occasions, I’ve received unsolicited advice from male photographers about not trading having children for a career. When I wrote about abortion rights in a past newsletter, the DMs consisted of men wondering if I just never met the right person (I have been married for twenty years). Though irritating, I never took any of these massively to heart. The few times I was interviewed about my experience as a woman photographer, I stated with confidence that it's been a great one.

I have never been above using these stereotypes for certain, useful purposes. I was recently on a Nat Geo Photo Society panel where a moderator asked how I navigate charged environments like political rallies and protests as a woman. My answer: I put on a dress and makeup and try to look as nonthreatening as possible. That has worked exceedingly well at Trump rallies, where my Eastern European accent and red lipstick made people curious about me, and I was able to get close to both the audience and to Trump himself, all because the Secret Service didn't take me too seriously.

Same goes for my street photography, which feels confrontational by the mere fact of the close distance to the people photographed. I am sure that being a woman has saved me from quite a few cases of disgruntled violence. I can photograph children on the street and stand close to a playground without looking suspicious to vigilant parents. I pursue my voyeuristic series of lit windows shot from the street without being reported to the police by an alarmed passerby. I was able to photograph the Amish community partly because, as a woman, I wasn’t considered threatening. “Does your husband let you come here all alone?” was a question I heard from a few concerned elders. Not being taken seriously has its sneaky advantages.

The downside of not being taken seriously is that it also tends to happen when I least intend it. There was a time when an editor at a portfolio review started making blatant advances during the actual review, commenting on my appearance instead of the photographs in front of him. Another time, I was sitting in the back of a press truck at Trump's first inauguration, excluded from a conversation between all male shooters who treated me like vapor. That felt weird, but was still better than the time at fashion week when a photographer physically picked me up to move me from what he claimed was his spot. When I was still a student, a successful artist I greatly admired texted me out of nowhere to propose meeting in a hotel room because he heard "I was fun." Instead of telling him to fuck off, I made a faltering excuse, after which he blocked me. The bitter taste of that incident lingers to this day.

Over time, I have found myself becoming more sensitive to casual misogyny in its many forms, whether blatant sexual innuendos or patronizing approval. They are present like a low-hum electricity, from unsolicited advice on how to properly hold a camera, to DMs with proposals to meet up without so much as a “Hello.” Most recently, I got an offer from a Middle Eastern gentleman to be flown into his hometown for photography tutoring, plus the chance to get to know him better. For a moment, I felt like a Disney princess with a camera.

Deleting messages with heart emojis and kisses, compliments on my appearance, questions if I'm single or have a minute to chat, and all kinds of sexual propositions from complete strangers have become a customary, normal part of the social media clutter. Every female photographer with a social media account is familiar with the experience. Virtual exposure inevitably comes at a cost, and for women, that cost is always higher.

Navigating digital misogyny is a peculiar experience because it is non-threatening and demeaning at the same time. Some men see these comments as compliments and are surprised they can make someone uncomfortable, ignoring the loss of professional distance that happens when remarks like these get flung out on social media, even with the best intentions.

An involuntary trace of complicity accompanies every one of these comments and messages, making me question if perhaps the tank top in the lava photo is too provocative. Thankfully, a few male commentators came to my defense. “Is anyone else completely creeped out by many of the male responses to this post?” the men chimed in, rebuking their less civil brethren, making me realize it would be more accurate not to group all the inappropriate commenters together as just “men,” but as a few entitled jerks.

I have since changed the triggering image to one that’s a bit more demure, and the comments have become more tepid and less frequent.

I have also written about the difference in approach between male and female photographers in the digital space.

A Common Question That Only Male Photographers Ask

Find me on Instagram @dina_litovsky

Welcome to In the Flash, a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography

Subscribe now

I am on the road for the last three weeks, shooting an assignment that’s taking me from East to West coast and back again. The micro jet lag is real, keeping me awake at odd hours and flattening my energy, but the shoot is exciting and I’ll share it here after it comes mid-May.

I’m back in NYC Friday to do a talk at the Women Street Photography Festival. I’ll be discussing photographic style and visual language, showing how I pieced it together over the years. The three epiphanies below are neither advice nor rules, but observations that have, over time, helped me form a coherent vision and get past the numerous dead ends every photographer faces.

Avoid making “fine art.” I was at a panel where a moderator asked, “Can documentary be fine art?” Though well-meaning, the question reinforces an unfortunate gatekeeping that places preemptive value on the final work while stifling creativity. To be labeled “fine art,” rules have to be followed, otherwise the term loses meaning. It standardizes subjects, aesthetics, approaches, and artist statements, forcing a photographer to fit into narrow standards of what’s already acceptable and celebrated in the art world.

Read more

Welcome to In the Flash, a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography

Subscribe now

During my first few years picking up the camera, I was teaching myself how to photograph by doing photoshoots first with myself, then friends, then branching out to find models through Craigslist. That's how I first met Molly Crabapple. In 2004, we did a shoot in her Brooklyn apartment, and I loved the results so much that I had a photo of Molly hanging in my house for a decade after. It was one of the pivotal points of my early stumbling-around-while-figuring-things-out era, and one that crystallized my then-delusional belief that I was good enough to turn photography into a career.

While a large print from our shoot hung in my house for years, Molly and I lost touch in the lawless, pre-Instagram era. It took twenty years for us to reconnect, virtually bumping into each other on social media. I wasn’t surprised that in that time, Molly had become a visual artist and a writer with a cult following. When I mentioned her name to a friend, he lit up like a teenager. “I had a crazy crush on her,” he said. “We all did.”

Other than being a muse for a generation of young men in New York, Molly has been busy. She has made a name for herself as a political illustrator, blending art, activism and sharp cultural commentary. She has covered Occupy Wall Street, the Syrian refugee crisis, the trials at Guantanamo Bay, and, most recently, has done work for the Mamdani campaign and ICE protests. Her illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and VICE, and she has published several books, including an illustrated memoir, Drawing Blood. On top of all this, Molly’s animation work has won two Emmys.

Molly’s latest book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country, the dramatic story of the Jewish Bund—a revolutionary movement from a vanished world—and its radical vision of solidarity in an age of division, is out now and available for pre-order.

Molly has also started a fiery Substack, Ink Vault, in which she shares her work and her unfettered thoughts on culture and politics. One of my favorite pieces tackled the absurdity of $6.2 Million Banana that was sold at auction. The newsletter, resplendent with dry wit and empathy is sharper than any other piece of writing I’ve read on the topic.

Excited to share her work and writing with all of you, I asked Molly a few questions.

What painters inspire your work?

I have a longtime obsession with Francisco de Goya, as this artist whose work encompassed everything from sexy naked majas to mean portraits of the aristocracy to devastating reportage of the French invasion. Recently I started doing copperplate etchings at Robert Blackburn Studio in Hell’s Kitchen, and it’s made me understand Goya's work in a whole new way. Those perfect spider lines! The clouds of grey! To work in the media of your favorite artist is to be able to see their art from the inside.

What artists are you looking at?

SWOON. Tatyanah Fazlalizadeh. Hiba Shahbaz. Danielle de Jesus. Phoebe Boswell.

What music are you listening to? Anything recent that you've been liking?

I love old records you get at the dollar bin at Johnny Albino's in Bushwick, and I always find old lady stuff there I adore like Edie Gorme. Also classic salsa like Hector Lavoe. For current stuff I love Saint Levant.

How do you work out your concepts from idea to completion? - writing it down? drawing drafts? - and how long does it take for each (approximately)

Its hard to count hours cause I'm in a fugue state of caffeine when I'm actually doing the drawing, but I want to say my best stuff takes a day or two (a few weeks for the bigass paintings). The concepts percolate for a long time. I talk them through with Fred, my boyfriend, and do chicken scratch sketches only I understand. Sometimes I fuck up a piece, tear it up, tantrum and have to start again. Overworking a piece is the enemy.

Do you have a person to bounce ideas from (friend/editor/husband)? How important is that to your practice?

Fred! I've been with this guy since I was twenty, and I'm forty one now, so it’s over half my life. He's a brilliant painter who taught me so much and always is able to look at my art and tell me what isn't working (something that's precious because my own eyes get fried staring at something and I can't tell any more what’s good or shit). We draw in diametrically opposite ways, but share tips, ideas, supplies, encouragement, and all nighters.

Ink Vault, Substack by Molly Crabapple

Here Where We Live Is Our Country, new book by Molly Crabapple

Find me on Instagram

Welcome to In the Flash, a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography

Subscribe now

In 2017, Kathy Ryan, the legendary director of the New York Times Magazine, gave me my first assignment for their annual travel issue: Hawaii, as seen through the eyes of a tourist. I never take beach vacations, considering them a mild form of psychological distress, because nothing triggers my ADD like the idea of laying out in the sun doing nothing. But with a camera, that's a different story. This was my chance to get the full Hawaii experience, including a luau, a tourist group activity I wouldn't be caught dead at otherwise.

When I landed on Maui, my local friends warned me, half-jokingly: Hawaii is where tourists come to die. I had no idea that the islands kill a remarkable number of visitors each year, mostly through drownings and hiking accidents, making it one of the most dangerous destinations in the United States. It was what I needed to hear. I was already a couple of days into the shoot but was struggling to find a cohesive aesthetic and emotional narrative that didn’t lean into postcard territory. Learning this tidbit added a sense of absurdity and macabre humor to an otherwise straightforward story about a popular vacation spot. I started noticing warning signs everywhere, at swimming holes, hiking trails and scenic overlooks across Maui, Oahu and the Big Island. As it turned out, the paradise had teeth.

I had to poke the black frozen lava of Kilauea volcano on the Big Island with a stick, probing for liquid fire underneath. One wrong step and you could fall through into the molten rock below. It was exhilarating. A couple of months after my visit, Kilauea erupted in one of the largest explosions in centuries, making such access impossible. As I was writing this newsletter, I got an alert that Kilauea had erupted again this Tuesday.

At the time, I was five years into working as an editorial photographer, just starting to feel confident about my voice, and trusting that when editors hire me, they do so for my style and opinion. This came naturally with my usual subjects; nightlife, parties and fashion week, but once I started getting assignments outside my wheelhouse, what was expected of me became fuzzier. Hawaii was an especially tough conundrum. It was one of my first travel stories, and I was torn between photographing it through a glorified, travel-magazine lens of scenic epicness, or with a humorous, observational critique. Unsure of myself, I shot both ways. Thankfully, Kathy Ryan's edit emphasized the latter, which gave me the confidence to trust myself going forward.

If you have followed me along with this newsletter, you know I don’t equate “intention” with a “shooting less” approach, and encourage photographing as many different scenes and angles as possible. This pays off especially well with distance and time, when original ideas fade in favor of a fresh perspective. Different themes can reveal themselves because the eye is more informed in retrospect, and you are a more experienced photographer with a different set of skills. The larger the edit (within reason of course) the more opportunities for tiny epiphanies.

This is what happened with the Hawaii assignment. Until recently, I photographed exclusively in horizontal format, and any image that didn’t fit my specific ratio was left out. Going back through the archive, I found a different edit hiding in the vertical scenes I had passed over as if they were invisible. At the time, I was struggling with the balance between beautiful scenery and deadpan humor, and the horizontal frames kept pulling me toward grandeur. The verticals exposed my original intention better, with the emphasis on smaller moments of levity rather than overwhelming scale.

Besides shooting more, I also advocate for not deleting photos in favor of a smaller footprint. This is, again, within reason — I delete doubles and obvious mistakes, but keep any visually strong image even if it doesn’t fit my current vision. Scarcity does not equal intention, and the more images you have, the more rewarding it will be to look back at them ten years from now. The forgotten ones can inspire a fresh edit through an updated perspective and a pleasant whiff of nostalgia.

I didn’t know that in 2017. Seduced by the idea that fewer photos in a portfolio made me a more thoughtful photographer, I kept only a tiny fraction of the Hawaii images. Seeing a new portfolio emerge from the paltry 300 photos I have saved made me bitterly regret deleting the rest.

So, if you are looking for the moral of the story:

Trust your voice.

Shoot plenty.

Don’t annihilate your archives.

And be very, very careful when swimming in Hawaii.

Find me on Instagram

The Hawaii Cure, by Wells Towers - NYTMag.

Share

In the Flash is a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

Read more

In the Flash is a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

By now, almost every freelance photographer has received the new WSJ/Dow Jones (WSJ’s parent company) photo contract. When I first got it, a cursory glance told me this wasn’t the usual photo contract, with the biggest industry red flag staring at me from the page: “Work-for-hire.” Alarmed, I brought in my trusted sidekick, ChatGPT to understand the contract better.

AI has been the biggest game changer in reading and understanding contracts, whose convoluted language is meant to confuse and cower you into submission. Most of the time, I signed whatever I was given, because it felt like a Sisyphus task to read, understand, and push back in a coherent way. AI enabled me to drop in the contract and ask for a point-by-point summary in plain English, including a comparison to the current industry standard. To make sure AI doesn’t hallucinate, I go over both the contract and the summary while asking questions and probing further to understand each issue. And while that still takes a bit of time, AI helps to demystify the language in a way that wasn’t available before, not without a lawyer.

This is what Lana (yes, I named my ChatGPT) told me when I gave her the WSJ contract for review. Everything in bold was Lana’s choice, for emphasis.

This is a very aggressive, rights-heavy editorial contract, Work made for hire + joint copyright is the core move here. Even though it gestures at joint ownership, in practice WSJ gets perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable editorial control and reuse, including sub-licensing, archives, promos, and future platforms, without paying royalties to the photographer. This is not a one-time editorial license in the way you describe to clients; it’s an institutional content acquisition. It’s doing something more exploitative and very modern: paying sub-market rates for permanent institutional ownership, and normalizing that arrangement as standard freelance editorial labor.

While the decision to sign rests with each individual, and there’s no judgment for anyone who felt they had to do it to keep working with the publication, every freelancer should be angry about this. For full transparency, WSJ is not my primary client, and I wouldn’t lose much by not signing, but for others whose main workload comes from the publication, refusing could feel like a financial death sentence. The catch is that signing it is a financial death sentence as well, slower and more insidious, but just as certain.

The difference between freelance editorial work, long the industry standard, and work-for-hire contracts is vast. Until recently, work-for-hire was used mainly in commercial contexts. When a corporation commissions work, such as Apple or a private corporate client, they almost always use a work-for-hire agreement, sometimes exclusive (the photographer loses the right to sell or use the images) sometimes as co-ownership, often after an embargo period. The fees for this are exponentially higher than editorial contracts. A commercial work-for-hire gig starts around a couple of thousands on a very, very low end, and goes up to tens of thousands. For that fee, sure, I’ll sign away my copyright, uncomfortable as that may feel.

Editorial rates are nowhere near those numbers. A $500 day rate is on the low end of the editorial spectrum, with many major publications hovering around $700 once you include a day rate plus a separate digital fee, and some going as high as $1,000+ when they’re generous with digital fees, equipment, assistants, and expenses. Such work has traditionally been governed by a standard editorial agreement that includes an embargo period, typically anywhere from 10 to 90 days depending on the publication, after which the photographer can license the images elsewhere. The more you work, the bigger that licensing image pool becomes, and the more passive income it generates to carry you through slow months. Without that secondary income, most freelance photographers wouldn’t be able to survive in the industry.

There are major publications with more aggressive contracts than the standard pay-per-assignment deal, such as The New York Times, which keeps the photographer and the publication as joint copyright owners, a model that gives the Times a non-exclusive, perpetual right to republish the images within the Times ecosystem (print, digital, and archives), while restricting syndication and third-party resale without permission and requiring additional fees for reuse. They pay $650 per assignment, a generous upgrade from $450 just a couple of years back, and they cover expenses when needed. The New York Times also gives a lot of assignments, so for someone working with the publication on a regular basis, the math is worth it.

WSJ, on the other hand, is more scarce with assignments, and at $500 day rate, it was not competitive even before the new rights grab. In general, $500-a-pop assignments are only worth it if they involve: 1) a subject you want to shoot anyway, 2) something close to home that doesn’t take too much time, 3) reselling potential. If you take away #3, the house of cards breaks down. WSJ treats the photographer’s intellectual property as though it created it, with the right to exploit the work indefinitely and for any purpose whatsoever. Instead of a temporary employer, with sub-licensing rights, WSJ becomes a competing entity to the very freelancers it hires, being able to sell the images without any royalties to the photographer. The math here does not add up.

The distinction between work-for-hire (WSJ) and joint copyright (The New York Times) is confusing but vital, so I’ll summarize it one more time. With work-for-hire, the publication is treated as the author from day one, and the photographer is forced to transfer ownership, so any “rights” the contract gives the photographer exist only because they’re granted back. With the New York Times model, you and the publication share the copyright under joint ownership, which gives NYTimes permanent license to publish within the Times ecosystem. But because the photographer remains the rightful owner of the images, The New York Times pays the photographer 50% of the gross receipts from any third-party syndication sales, whereas WSJ pays 0%.

WSJ’s contract gets even uglier after the work-for-hire clause, with a Trojan Horse of the idea that as the copyright owner, WSJ would be able to go after illegal licensing of the work and sue for compensation. The problem is that the work-for-hire structure makes it much more difficult for the photographer to pursue monetary damages for infringements because the photographer’s ability to ask for money or sue depends entirely on whatever narrow “rights granted back” the contract gives them. If that language is weak (which it is), the photographer can lose standing in court, and if WSJ handles an infringement with takedown notices or a settlement, the photographer’s ability to pursue such illegal uses independently can be effectively destroyed.

As if taking away the photographer’s licensing and infringement-earning potential isn’t enough, there is also an indemnification clause that can make the photographer financially responsible for covering Dow Jones’ losses and legal costs if a claim arises from the photographs. That’s right, you read that correctly. At the same time as it takes over the copyright, Dow Jones can push its legal bills back onto the photographer for third-party claims tied to originality and permissions, without a stated cap or a clear carve-out for Dow Jones’s own edits and reuse decisions. In contrast, The New York Times indemnification clause asks the photographer to “cooperate” with legal defense rather than making them financially responsible for it. For $500, the risk is absurd, and it makes the Goodfellas “fuck you, pay me” mafia motto sound fair and balanced.

What I’m most worried about is not just this particular contract, but the ripple effects it could have on the industry if photographers end up signing en masse. If we don’t push back as a united front now, whether by refusing to sign or by spreading the word, this will normalize the practice, making it an existential issue for freelance photography. It is then inevitable that other publications will take note and switch their contracts as well, until the whole industry is permanently shifted from an editorial standard to a work-for-hire model. Without passive income, the lifeline of almost every working photographer and the closest thing to a retirement investment freelancers have, this would be catastrophic.

I’m not the first to speak about this issue, in fact, I’m late to the party. Both APhotoEditor and Your Visual Colleagues, an anonymous group of freelance photographers, have been informing people and campaigning against the WSJ contract for the last month. Unlike theater and film, photographers don’t have a union, so this is the closest we have to a fortified front. Another group on our side is the editors. It’s unfortunate that editors bear the brunt of communicating unpleasant news to photographers when, by and large, they are passionate professionals who have our best interest in mind. I have worked with a number of wonderful WSJ editors, and I am careful to separate the messenger from the message.

So, what do you do if you’ve received the contract and you’re not sure what your options are? Pushing back against a mega-corporation like Dow Jones is a David/Goliath scenario on steroids, and the only possible remedy is a unified front of professionals. When I put up a survey on my Instagram about whether or not freelance photographers had signed the contract, the numbers looked promising, with the overwhelming majority voting “no.” The list of people who didn’t sign included some of the top editorial photographers working today, which made me think that WSJ wouldn’t just lose in quantity, but would also stand to lose in quality. It makes sense that contracts like this prey on emerging photographers more than they do on seasoned professionals who have other options, but in the end, it puts everyone in danger.

Your Visual Colleagues, an anonymous group of independent photographers, created a letter addressed to WSJ leadership explaining why the new terms would put freelance photographers in dire straits. Thus far, they have acquired 594 signatures and will be continuing their efforts to push the WSJ to create a more equitable contract. If you would like to learn more and to sign onto these efforts, here is the link:

Response to the new WSJ contract

More reading.

APhoto Editor, New WSJ Contract

The Murky Ethics of Photography NDAs and Work for Hire Contracts - I’ve written about the proliferation of work-for-hire contracts in a previous newsletter.

Find me on Instagram

In the Flash is a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

Read more

In the Flash is a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

Read more

Welcome to In the Flash, a weekly, behind-the-lens dialogue on photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

For the last year, the photography industry has been rocked by a scandal that the Terror of War, colloquially known as Napalm Girl, a famous Pulitzer-winning Vietnam War photograph taken by Nick Ut, was not taken by him after all. A documentary directed by Bao Nguyen and produced by Gary Knight, the executive director of the VII agency, claims that the photograph was willfully misattributed to Nick Ut by an AP editor and without his knowledge or consent. The agency favored the byline of an established AP photographer, Ut, over an unknown Vietnamese stringer with a foreign-sounding name, Nguyễn Thành Nghệ, who was photographing the same scene at the same time.

Such an alternative narrative of events from 1972 has been the subject of frenzied discussion on social media, with photographers tearing each other apart in their polarized support of either Nick Ut or Nguyễn Thành Nghệ. I followed those exchanges with curiosity. The film wasn’t available to the public until just a couple of weeks ago, and I wondered how people could have such strong opinions without either being at the scene or having a full grasp of the evidence. A couple of colleagues whom I respect landed on opposite sides of the divide, making the matter even more complicated. Santiago Lyon, a former Director of Photography of AP, appears in the documentary and seems persuaded by the argument, while the legendary photographer David Burnett, who worked alongside Ut that day, has been vociferous in defending him, claiming that he saw Ut take the photograph with his own eyes. In the famous words of Fiddler on the Roof,

“He’s right, and he’s right? They can’t both be right.. You know, you are also right.”

I finally watched The Stringer on Netflix this weekend. Since I have no allegiance to one side or the other, my intention was to approach it without any strong bias. For one subconscious reason or another, I was rooting for Ut when the film began, but as it went on, I was more convinced by the evidence than I expected to be.

Watching Nghệ and his daughter claim that he is the real author of the Napalm Girl is the most emotional and convincing part of the documentary. It is hard to listen to them tearfully recount their version of events without being at least somewhat persuaded. Unlike Ut’s case, where memory could falter about which specific frames could or could not come from one of several cameras he used that day, the family’s narrative is harder to reimagine. The photo was allegedly sold by the stringer to AP for twenty dollars, then a copy of it was ripped up by Nghệ’s wife to spare the children from seeing the horror, while she kept a clipping of the same image among her personal belongings. To fabricate a story like that would require an odd family conspiracy dating back to 1972.

That is where my sympathy for the film ends. Though the opening scene presents it as an investigation in search of the truth, it plays more like a prosecutor’s argument with the verdict decided from the get-go. To take away a photographer’s credit after fifty years is a really, really grave matter, yet the documentary treats it in a way that feels flippant, presenting evidence for only one side of the case.

Nick Ut himself is conspicuously absent. The filmmakers gesture toward this only once, showing a couple of text messages Gary Knight sent to Ut requesting a meeting (no response from Ut visible), then cutting to Knight waiting in a café and sighing when Ut does not appear. The moment, filmed from two angles, feels staged and a bit cringe, raising questions about what really happened. The film’s final line states that Ut has not responded to multiple requests for an interview, but for an accusation of this magnitude, it feels low-effort at best to not include anyone else who has corroborated Ut’s version of events.

A scene that unsettled me the most is the 3D recreation of the moment the Napalm Girl photo was taken, showing a nine-year-old Kim Phuc running down the road. Phuc, completely naked and screaming in pain, is flashed on the screen over and over again as the film attempts to prove that Nick Ut could not have been in the right position to take the picture. By doing so, the filmmakers exposed an astounding lack of sensitivity, with the child’s body dehumanized as potential evidence and her suffering flattened into a forensic illustration. I wonder how Kim Phuc, who is also absent from the film, would feel seeing herself used as a pawn in a testosterone-laden game of whodunit.

While the documentary presents this rendering as irrefutable evidence, AP has disputed the 3D model and its conclusions. After almost a year of its own investigation and a public ninety-page report, the agency argues that the render is flawed, built on selective assumptions and incorrect environmental details that make it unable to exclude Nick Ut in any definitive way. AP produced its own account of the scene through a detailed chronological sequence and photographs, which I found more coherent and easier to follow than the confusing 3D model. Although the agency’s conclusion remains unsatisfying because the physical evidence is incomplete, it does challenge the film’s smoking gun assertion that Ut could not have been close enough to make the image, stating:

“The review shows that Ut was on the road outside Trang Bang that day… carrying four cameras… that he was moving around relentlessly shooting high-quality news photos of the village … and that he was in the vicinity of where Kim Phuc and other children and adults emerged from the devastating scene… AP has concluded that it is possible Nick Ut took the photo.”

Another misleading idea in the film is its graft of the broader narrative about Western outlets favoring white photographers over local shooters in second- and third-world countries. That bias is real, but it collapses in this case because both photographers at the center of the authorship dispute are Vietnamese, and the actual power imbalance sits with Western editors and institutions rather than with Nick Ut’s ethnicity. The film doesn’t acknowledge this tension, which makes its appeal to a broader narrative of racial injustice feel like fashionable virtue signaling rather than a grounded critique of what happened in this particular case.

The lack of effort to include anyone who could speak on Nick’s behalf is glaring, and it remains the film’s weakest link. Though I was moved by the testimonies of Nghệ and his family, these are circumstantial and personal accounts. Outside of those, little verifiable evidence exists of Nghệ taking this particular image or any other photograph from the Vietnam War. The film presents no physical proof: no roll, no camera, no contact sheets, and no surviving negatives. The explanation is that Nghệ lost much of his equipment, cameras, and negatives when he emigrated to the United States with only one suitcase, which is plausible but still a tiny bit sus to any working photographer, because if our house is burning, the first thing we try to save are our negatives or hard drives. On the other side, the AP report includes two different frames of Kim Phuc running attributed to Nick Ut in their archive which visually align with his other images from the day (a subjective read, of course) — the decisive moment, the slight camera tilt, and the wide-angle composition.

So, who actually photographed Napalm Girl? After watching the documentary, reading the AP report, as well as interviews and statements from several of the key players on both sides, I can say with complete confidence that I have no idea. This strange story has too much contradictory information that is way above my pay grade. While plausible evidence exists on both sides, my biggest frustration with The Stringer is that it presents an argument against Nick Ut as unilateral and is blatant in its desire to convict rather than investigate. It leans on sentiment, with maudlin cinematic choices and leading interviews that push emotion over clarity, when I would have preferred a more objective approach and far less tugging at heartstrings.

For a photographer, losing authorship is a terrifying possibility akin to losing one’s archives. I sympathize with Nick Ut for having his authorship denied in such a public manner, and I sympathize with Nguyễn Thành Nghệ for possibly having his credit erased from the start. What makes The Stringer hard to sit with is how cruel it feels toward Nick Ut, as if the spectacle of dismantling his legacy matters more than the dignity of the photographer, who, by their own admission, was a victim of circumstance. Did the film need to exist to prove that Nick Ut did not take the photo, or could that have been handled inside the industry and with more grace? I think it could have.

30% Off Annual and Gift Subscriptions

Find me on Instagram

In the Flash is a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

Read more

In the Flash is a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

Personal end-of-year photo lists are always an exercise in vanity, and this year was no exception, except that I tried to extract something useful from the self-affirming ritual. I wondered whether dividing the work into categories might force patterns to surface, visual and conceptual, and allow me to look at my own photographs more critically, with the same detachment I bring to the work of others. Seeing my work at a macro level has always been a struggle since ego and proximity cloud judgment. What if this exercise could function as a hack, a way to understand why I photograph what I do, and why I do it the way I do.

Spoiler: It kind of worked.

Grouping images into broad categories, street, portraits of men, portraits of women, and documentary, flattened differences of subject, format, and composition and revealed the intrinsic power of individual photos along with their weaknesses. Each image had to fight for relevance, and the result was closer to a bloodbath than a victory parade.

What emerged most clearly was an aesthetic language linking the images I kept returning to. Intent consciously operates at the level of a single photograph or project. Beneath that runs a more insidious compulsion, one I am still learning to excavate and harness.

Nicole Scherzinger for Prabal Gurung, Met Gala. Celebrity shoots are engineered to be polished and tightly controlled, but occasionally an expression slips through that punctures the choreography and breaks the barrier everyone worked so hard to maintain.

King Princess for the New Yorker. Probably my favorite portrait shoot of the year. I asked Mikaela, her real name, to loosen the dress shirt down to show off the “mom” tattoo and everything clicked.

Joy Woods, a Broadway lead actress, for New York Magazine. The editors chose a different, sparklier frame, but this one feels more magnetic to me.

Shakira for Prabal Gurung. Shakira brought the energy of a Disney princess so I went with that. Pink on pink on pink.

Wendy Williams for New York Magazine. The fastest shoot of the year. I had 30 seconds with Wendy as she moved from the door to her front-row seat at fashion week. Wendy knew I was photographing but wanted me to shoot her like a paparazzi. I managed to get three frames, including one shot with a mirror fragment that became the cover.

Musician Penelope Trappes, in collaboration with music writer, Philip Sherburne. The final frame of a remote shoot in London, where Penelope lives. After photographing more straightforward portraits, I wanted to experiment with her standing behind a glass door. I never try to match musician with their music, but this one landed in the same eerie emotional register as Penelope’s work.

Coralie Fargeat, director of The Substance, for New York Magazine. I asked Coralie to look at my camera and not toward the blinding strobe my assistant was holding in the front seat. She did the opposite, turning instinctively toward the light and gasping, since the flash was brutal. Once her eyesight returned, we took more deliberate frames, but none carried the stark charge of the mistake.

Brittany Hugoboom for NZZ. Brittany is a co-founder and editor-in-chief of Evie, a conservative magazine devoted to “femininity.” I was interested in the energy she brought, part boss girl and part sex kitten, and in what would happen if I leaned into it rather than neutralized it. To test the waters, I asked if she could flip her hair back, and her agreement told me that she was willing to play.

Lencia Kebede, the Broadway star of Wicked, for the New York Times. This assignment was also my first video work, since the NYTimes now requires most shoots to include short clips. Though daunting at first, I loved doing video and snuck in this portrait in between. Now I often film brief video segments during a shoot, letting subjects settle into a rhythm that carries naturally into the stills.

Bella Meyer, for NZZ. Bella is the granddaughter of Marc Chagall and owns a flower shop in the East Village, which made the theme almost unavoidable. I wanted flowers in the frame, but not as decoration, so I pushed against them with shadows and reflections to keep the image from settling into something too literal.

Musician Avalon Emerson, in collaboration with music writer, Philip Sherburne. The fish has something to tell you. Twin Peaks fans will get this one.

Film director, Tina Romero, for the New York Times. Tina is the daughter of horror legend George A. Romero, and released her first film this year. We shot in her Brooklyn apartment, where space and options were limited, but she was willing to get strange. We pulled a mirror off the wall, and I performed a Spider-Man move to catch the angle.

The president of the Marshall Islands, Hilda Heine, for the New York Times Magazine. The only woman among a remote portfolio of six world leaders for the Climate issue of the magazine. The portraits were inspired by the hero archetypes of comic books and Lichtenstein’s graphic punch. This frame made me happy because of the necklace nested inside a circle inside a circle.

Musician Rebekka Karijord, in collaboration with music writer, Philip Sherburne. Another remote portrait since Rebekka lives in Stockholm, Sweden. It risks being too literal, given that she plays the harp, but I liked the sharp lines obstructing the face so I went with it.

Danya Taymor, American theater director, for the New York Times. Bringing in objects is tricky for the risk of becoming forced and gimmicky, but no risk no glory.

This year, I started making single-page galleries for every project as a way to understand how the images flow together, which colors pop, and which emotion dominates. It’s a deceptively simple exercise, but it reveals more about intent than any other trick I’ve tried, largely because the distance keeps the invested ego at arm’s length.

Futurism Restated, Philip Sherburne’s substack.

Wendy Williams Cover Going Viral in the Court of Public Opinion, In the Flash.

How I Created Remote Portraits of Musician Penelope Trappes — and Had a Breakthrough with Hands, In the Flash

Portraits of King Princess for the New Yorker, and How I Distilled the Final Edit, In the Flash.

Find me on Instagram

In the Flash is a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

Read more

In the Flash is a reader-supported publication about intent and creativity in photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

Here are five of my favorite paid posts of 2025.

• Favorite Advice and Hacks That Rewired My Photography

I’ve always found popular slogans like find joy in the process, embrace your creativity, step out of your comfort zone, etc., unhelpful and vague. They sound profound, but collapse under scrutiny because the question remains, but how? Instead, I focused on micro-advice, the hacks and approaches that sound more mundane than falling in love with seeing, but that either changed my way of thinking or streamlined the shooting/editing process in a quantifiable way.

• A Common Question That Only Male Photographers Ask

Ambushing a total stranger about their setup is an audacious question, and adding that you are interested in replicating it for your practice sounds entitled and a touch delusional. Throughout my career, I’ve received numerous inquiries of this kind, and all of them came from male photographers. The few times that women did reach out for professional advice, the requests were swaddled in diplomacy.

• My Comprehensive Guide to Remote Photography

Though remotes sound intimidating, they are easy to start. All you need is a laptop, an app, and a willing subject. The stakes rise once creative ideas come into play and the desire is to get away from a straightforward portrait in window light. The pitfalls of the process lie in the details that are impossible to anticipate unless you keep shooting and chipping away at them as they come. I’ve developed my process through frustrating fails and tiny, glorious epiphanies.

• Portraits of King Princess for the New Yorker, and How I Distilled the Final Edit

Many of you asked about my editing process and the outtakes for any given shoot. So, I made a few videos showing the larger edit for this assignment, my star rating system and thoughts on why certain photos were chosen. The edit I’m showing is whittled down from 600+ photos to just over 200. The ones that got deleted were obvious mistakes and identical looking outtakes. That brought me down to photos rated in Lightroom from 1 to 5. Here is a video of the entire edit.

• How Photographing at Speed Rack Helped Answer the Question: Am I a Better Photographer Than I Was a Decade Ago?

As a younger photographer, I’d never get to that last row. The difference is not that I can compose better — my very best photos stayed on approximately the same level — but that a crucial change in mindset has resulted in astronomically increased consistency and an ability to think through high-stressed situations. Back then, I didn’t have either the understanding of what it takes or the perseverance to stick it out in hard situations.

Find me on Instagram

Welcome to In the Flash, a weekly, behind-the-lens dialogue on photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

Part 1 of Tattoo Convention, Four Different Ways, ended on a cliffhanger,

“I didn’t want to repeat any of the things I’ve done previously, so I’ve done something shocking. I didn’t take my flash.”

I’ve done several projects without flash in the past, including the series Meatpacking and Where the Amish Vacation. The first one worked because of the satisfying, saturated contrast of night and ambient city lights. In the second, the pop came from the bright sun casting deep shadows on colorful clothing, making flash redundant. But I’ve never shot an indoor event without flash. The overhead lights are too dull and too uninspired to satisfy my thirst for visual drama. The annual New York Tattoo Convention was the first time I went commando, equipped with just one small camera (Leica Q3 43, for the techno-fetishists).

As much as I love using flash, working without it feels light and noncommittal and is more about having fun than trying to come out with something worthwhile. When I first arrived at the convention, daylight spilled through the windows, creating a soft, even light that left me unable to take a single photo. But just as I decided that no photos were happening, it got dark, and every tattoo station turned on their lamps, glowing like fireflies.

For the next couple of hours I walked from station to station, exposing for ambient lights and throwing the rest into a black void. The method is the same as if I were using flash, so I didn’t get too far from my usual sensibilities. But the shoot felt liberating because I wasn’t trying to take “good” photos. Having giddy fun with the camera without the pressure of an assignment or a personal project is a luxury I don’t get to do often.

Though I have a personal gripe with photographs being compared to paintings, I couldn’t help thinking of my favorite Rembrandt works. Contrary to public consensus, I am tepid towards his portraits, but I love his theatrical tableaus. A woman lying under golden light on a black table made me think of Rembrandt’s Danaë. My first art education came in the form of postcards that my mom collected, featuring paintings from museums around the world. The postcards, a precious item in the Soviet Union, were kept under lock and key, but she would give them to me whenever I was sick or wanted to draw. That’s when I fell in love with Danaë, sketching it obsessively.

It takes a single bolt of inspiration to jumpstart my photo engine, and once I made the Rembrandt connection, I started seeing photos everywhere. Another painting came to mind, the macabre and fabulous The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. Ironically, it was the painting that first made me consider becoming a doctor. Mom was so perplexed that a 9-year-old was fascinated by the clinical scene that she decided I was destined to be a surgeon and planted the idea in my head. I spent my entire teenage and early adult years pursuing it, going through a pre-med program at NYU, then abandoning it, to my mom’s chagrin, in favor of… art.

My initial interest in these conventions came from a desire to get a tattoo. In Ukrainian Jewish tradition, that is tantamount to putting a curse on the entire family. So, of course, as a self-proclaimed rebel, I needed to have one. But I couldn’t decide on what. At the time, I was oscillating between a black and white upside-down umbrella and my favorite quote, “All that is solid melts into air.” But the first one was too cheeky and the second too epic, so I reached an impasse. Photographing at a tattoo convention was my way of choosing the right artwork. The plan backfired. Confronted with so many options, I realized that the tattoo urge was mainly a reaction against my upbringing and that I didn’t want anything permanent on my body. Though I am fascinated by them, it turned out that tattoos are not really my thing.

But photographing at the conventions did inspire my assistant and husband, Sasha, to start his own tattoo adventures, which are continuing to this day.

I’m doing a Black Friday sale for personal and gift annual subscriptions starting next week, but if you’ve read till the end, you can get a discounted subscription starting today.

If you do end up subscribing, I’d love to hear from you what topics you’d like me to address in paid posts for the next year. Please leave them in comments below.

30% Off Black Friday sale

Tattoo Convention, Four Different Ways, Part 1

Find me on Instagram

Welcome to In the Flash, a weekly, behind-the-lens dialogue on photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

Can you photograph the same event with a different set of eyes? And should you?

There are two methods of returning to the same scene, whether a Pride Parade or a tattoo convention. The first is to keep doing the same thing over and over again to build a unified portfolio over a few years. That’s usually how I approach things, getting more informed and nuanced shots each time. Fashion Lust is a series that grew out of a decade of photographing fashion week, and though the images are taken years apart in three different cities, they are consistent in their intent and visual approach. This approach tends to follow a predictable curve of inspiration. The work gets better and better until it peaks, hits an inevitable plateau, becomes stuck, or even starts dipping. Instead of the usual excitement, returning to shoot feels like drudgery, and the visuals become redundant. That phase is hard to break through and most often signals the end of the project.

The second approach is gamification — how many different stories and aesthetics can I squeeze out when returning to the same space over several years? I try out different techniques, find alternative narratives and new ways of seeing, all within the constricting range of personal sensibilities. The disadvantage of this method is never fully exploiting each approach to its end goal, so the photos don’t add up as a unified project. On the positive side, the curve of inspiration never goes down, and each shoot is just as exhilarating and full of possibilities as the last one.

Read more

Welcome to In the Flash, a weekly, behind-the-lens dialogue on photography. To join the conversation

Subscribe now

In 2023, I found myself in Tokyo on Halloween. That year, Halloween in Shibuya was officially “cancelled,” a government response to rowdy partying in 2018 that resulted in an overturned truck and arrests. In a futile attempt to prevent another incident, the mayor of Shibuya instituted a night-time drinking ban, alcohol sales cutoffs, and a heavy police presence to prevent crowds from gathering. All of that seemed to only encourage people to flood Shibuya, and the scene was madness.

There was no violence that year, and the night was chaotic and fun. But scattered among the revelers was a jarring presence of brutal costumes.

Proceed with the gallery on your own risk.

Read more