What I’m Reading
June 14, 2022
In today’s What I’m Reading I share a wonderful piece of long-form journalism, a profile of a photographer I found in The New Yorker. Then, I have a fascinating primer into the world of data visualizations for you. And lastly, I found a story that will calm your nerves and make you dream about your next travel adventure.
The Art of the Profile
I love long-form journalism, and I regret life is all too often in the way of spending sufficient time with deeply reported and carefully written non-fictional stories. For Ben Taub’s “Paolo Pellegrin’s Photographic Quest for the Sublime,” which was published in the May 23, 2022 issue of The New Yorker, I permitted myself to spend the time I needed.
It’s a wonderful profile that feels at home in the magazine’s rich literary tradition. You need some time to appreciate its quality. The accompanying audio recording (well-read, by the way), lasts for almost 45 minutes. I’m happy I spent my time with it.
I doubt you would regret your investment. The story draws you in immediately through its immersive opening scene, where the profile’s subject, photographer Paolo Pellegrin, and the writer launch into a photography session in Namibia.
Taub brings Pellegrin to life; the photographer, the journalist, the artist, and the human. He achieves it through a combination of immersive and descriptive writing as well as deep reporting that shows in the included detail on their surroundings, Pellegrin’s life, and understanding of photography.
Taub brings Pellegrin’s personality to life, a tribute to their close relationship. It shows how important all the little processes around writing are for writing well. Just as Pellegrin describes the art of photography as so much more than taking pictures. You’ll find a brilliant quote on that in the profile, which includes Pellegrin describing the resulting pictures as a “by-product of everything else.”
I highly recommend you give this a read. You’ll learn more about the relationship between writer and subject, how Pellegrin shifts between photographing war and climate change, how he matured as a photographer and artist, and how he deals with being threatened by blindness.
It’s a strong example of a long but effortless read that shows the written word still has a place in our digitized and visualized world.
Learn to Translate Data to Stories
The next recommendation steers you behind the scenes of journalism. “How I approach a data visualization story: A case study with California wildfires” is a good explainer that leaves you with pointers about how journalists work with data and translate it into stories anyone can understand and appreciate.
The article is published on the blog of the Advanced Media Institute at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. There’s no byline that I could find, but based on the writing and the story discussed, it’s safe to assume it’s Peter Aldhous, a science journalist at BuzzFeed News and an instructor with the institute.
It’s a shorter read that guides you through the process of working with data. In the early stages, it’s about finding your goal for an assignment and what information you’re looking for in the data. Then, it’s about the work with the data (how to read and analyze it, how to understand it). Finally, data work means creating visuals that tell the story the data includes or put differently: data journalism turns complex data into stories anyone can understand.
The writer provides compelling samples from one of his stories and explains how and why he designed the visuals the way he did. There’s also guidance on how to read them.
I love the transparency and the insights. It’s a fascinating read for journalists but also valuable for readers.
Let Photography Comfort You
Today’s final recommendation is all about pictures that draw you in and make you dream. “Stepping Back: A Filipino-American Sojourn” is a travel photo essay by Los Angeles Times staff photographer Luis Sinco.
He set out to remove himself from the “slog” of life, as the photographer describes his impression of the 2020s so far, by traveling to his home country, the Philippines.
Besides a collection of beautiful photography, you’ll find personal observations of the country and its development. More so, Sinco shares his thoughts on photography: what photographing with a phone on this assignment/trip did for him.
I highly recommend you have a look and enjoy this travel piece, soak in the comforting impressions that will soothe whatever stresses you’re under.
So much for this week’s reading recommendations. My journalism diary needs a little more tinkering before I can start sharing, but fresh pictures are coming later this week. Until then, happy reading.
