Back to all topics Disaster Focus
336 Posts
Notes Photo June 1, 2021

Haunting for the Beauty, or the Stalking?

Beauty and subtlety distracts from the reality of asylum seekers in this news photos from the US/Mexico border.

Continue Reading
Chatting the Pictures Video February 28, 2021

Chatting the Pictures: A Telling Photo of a Cold Stricken Texas and the Heat About a Blackout

Blackout photos got Texans steaming after a historic freeze knocked out heat, power, and water. This picture proves telling in every detail.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo February 18, 2021

Record Texas Freeze and a Photo of the Times

More and more, news photographs are capturing compound crises. Combining climate and Covid, this scene is particularly arresting.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo September 16, 2020

Global Heating and Fire: California Jumps the Gap

It's not just a bad fire season. These photos both symbolize and demonstrate how California has crossed a critical climate threshold.

Continue Reading
Chatting the Pictures Video April 3, 2020

Chatting the Pictures: More Pandemic—New York Harbor; Las Vegas Homeless; NYC ICU

This webcast on the pandemic looks at a symbolic scene in New York Harbor, a troubling Las Vegas shelter image, and an emotional Brooklyn hospital photo.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo March 31, 2020

The Elbow Move

There will be plenty of memories from the coronavirus crisis. But our bodies, if pray we stay well, will best remember the basic contortions.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo March 30, 2020

About Feeling Crazy Right Now

The photo isn't about eccentricity, it's about mental health. And it's about the symptoms we are all experiencing from the virus these days.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo March 26, 2020

What Should and Shouldn’t We Be Seeing?

This virus photo from a Belgium hospital has a "sensitive material" warning. But perhaps it's necessary to see--and not just for the obvious reason.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo March 25, 2020

Virus Meets Cat Gramming

As the coronavirus grips Washington and the nation, this cat photo by Alex Wroblewski is not just sweet. It offers a dose of emotional immunity.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo March 15, 2020

As the Coronavirus Shutters Broadway

Photographers are using their symbolic gifts to process the loss of normality from the coronavirus. Here, the focus is on Broadway.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo March 10, 2020

Drawing on Contagion

This drawing by a young girl in Italy is a poignant illustration of the threat of coronavirus, and also the health of the planet. ⠀

Continue Reading
Notes Photo February 25, 2020

Tokyo 2020, Or Not

In terms of what photographs do, this split view of tourists above and the stadium below projects us five months into the Olympic future.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo March 20, 2019

The Grieving Woman at the Ethiopian Airlines Crash Site, and the Western Gaze

The expression of grief is so intense, I cannot forget it. At the same, however, I feel challenged looking at the photo as a westerner.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo December 29, 2018

Slow Violence, Slow Photography: Chris Gregory’s Portrait of Puerto Rico after Maria

How do you photograph systemic failure? Chris Gregory's Puerto Rico portrait does it through juxtaposition, capturing natural calamity and colonial neglect, both fast and slow.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo October 22, 2018

What We’re Looking At: Hurricanes Michael and Khashoggi

Visual news has been dominated by two hurricanes lately. Here are selected photos with commentary.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo October 16, 2017

Has Climate Change Killed the California Dream?

California is used to the edge. With the multi-year drought and now these firestorms, however, I'm wondering if climate change has tipped the scale.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo October 7, 2017

Las Vegas, Puerto Rico, Catalonia: Our Roundup of the Week

Hurricanes, earthquakes, the threat of nuclear war. Just when you thought another cataclysm couldn't possibly happen, the Las Vegas massacre happened.

Continue Reading
Notes Photo September 21, 2017

News Photos: Taking 2 Quakes to Feel for Mexico

It took a second devastating earthquake for visual media to focus more intimately on Mexico's suffering. Should it have?

Continue Reading