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A Pioneering Photographer Revives Her Slide Show of Lesbian Life
For several years, starting in 1979, the photographer Joan E. Biren, or JEB, travelled around presenting a slide show that she’d spent…
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“Prince Faggot” Sends Up Kink and Country
On a blue-lit stage, a naked man—blindfolded, trussed, and gagged—hangs like a deer from a pole. Pale and gleaming, he looks like a…
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The Shrewdly Regenerative Apocalypse of “28 Years Later”
Perhaps because cannibalism comes with the territory, the zombie movie has proved uncommonly immune to a certain strain of critical…
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A.I. Is Homogenizing Our Thoughts
In an experiment last year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, more than fifty students from universities around Boston were…
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Glory and Gore in “Afternoons of Solitude”
You don’t have to like bullfighting to watch “Afternoons of Solitude” with fascination, any more than you have to like crime to enjoy a…
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“The Gilded Age” Is a Poor Man’s Period Drama
In the HBO drama “The Gilded Age,” the characters are keenly aware that they live in interesting times. Early in the series, which is set…
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Ben Shahn, the Lefty Artist Who Was Left Behind
From the late nineteen-forties through the mid-fifties, Ben Shahn was one of the most in-demand artists in America. Whether you were…
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Bach’s Colossus
Bach’s Mass in B Minor begins with a majestic howl of pain—four adagio bars that combine formal grandeur with writhing interior lines, as…
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Christoph Niemann’s “The Bridge”
“The real beauty of the Brooklyn Bridge can only be experienced in motion,” the artist Christoph Niemann said, about his cover for the…
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Your Hip Surgery, My Headache, by David Sedaris
It was nice to get away, if only for a few hours. To have someone bring me bowls of nuts and glasses of water. At the table, I mentioned…
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The Magic of Daylight in a Land of Sun Worship
With “P’unchaw,” the photographer Victor Zea captures the light falling on Cuzco, Peru, where people have mixed Catholic and Indigenous…
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Why I Wear the Turban
“The Turban” exposes a paradox. I can’t imagine ever surrendering my turban. It’s become soldered to my identity, serving as both the…
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Revisiting “Columbus,” a Thrilling Drama of Growing Up Modernist
There’s a special kind of movie that’s inextricably linked to where it’s filmed. The locations aren’t just picturesque settings for action…
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The Astonishing Images of Diane Arbus
The grim spectacle of bullfighting is displayed with an unflinching, intimate glory in Albert Serra’s documentary “Afternoons of…
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“Familiar Touch” Is an Exquisitely Fragmentary Portrait of Memory Loss
We all have our distinct cinematic pressure points, specific kinds of images that trigger a burst of squeamishness. I instinctively cover…
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Anne Enright’s Literary Journeys to Australia and New Zealand
Not long ago, the Irish writer Anne Enright visited Australia and New Zealand. When asking for a local recommendation at the Potts Point…
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The World That ABBA Made
There is probably not a second that goes by without an ABBA song being played somewhere in the world. A remix of “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A…
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Catherine Lacey’s Infinite Regress
A Möbius strip, a looped surface with a single continuous side, is often formed by cutting a long, thin piece of paper and joining its…
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What’s Happening to Reading?
What do you read, and why? A few decades ago, these weren’t urgent questions. Reading was an unremarkable activity, essentially unchanged…
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Why Donald Trump Is Obsessed with a President from the Gilded Age
Late in his life, McKinley reconsidered protectionism. He was reëlected in 1900, and by his second Administration he felt that the United…
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The Portland Bar That Screens Only Women’s Sports
When Jenny Nguyen was in her twenties, working as a chef in her home town of Portland, Oregon, she became a regular at pickup basketball…
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Cactus Wren Is Doing Its Own Thing
The space is bright and open, with high ceilings and large windows that highlight the eternally terrific people-watching of the Lower East…
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Play It Again, Charles Burnett
One of Burnett’s earliest cinematographic efforts is the silent short “69 Pickup,” written and directed by Penick. Two Black men pick up a…