What happened to photography at New Yorker Magazine?

 

Magazines

I used to have a subscription of New Yorker magazine, and part of the thrill was to see the photography, in particular what Richard Avedon had come up with each week (that way, I did learn that even someone like Avedon could also produce extremely mediocre photographs - something, I think, Alec Soth pointed out later on his blog [using the John Kerry portrait as an example]). But I think there was more than just Avedon’s work. Or maybe memory doesn’t serve me right. In any case, after some sort of subscription hiatus I’m now back (hear that, Alec?), since someone gave me a gift subscription. And each week, I’m now dreading to see the new edition because the photography has just become so… well, how can I say this in a nice way? It’s just so forgettable and safe (with the exception of a couple of photographs in the March 10 issue that is). Often, the only interesting photographs are to be found in the Listings pages (after the “Goings on about town” page), when they show an example of work to be seen in Chelsea. Maybe I have to go back and look at older issues now to see whether they still appear to be more interesting. But to see a magazine that, if I remember this correctly, was the first to hire a fine-art photographer as a staff photographer going down such a predictable and outright boring route is a bit sad.