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Missing

One week before the planes flew into the towers, I secured my first full-time, salaried job. I had applied to work for the New York City Parks Department at the suggestion of my roommate, Ethan. He’d recently quit his Parks job—not because he hadn’t liked it, but because he was, by his own reckoning, in the midst of a quarter-life crisis, brought on by the unexpected death of his father a few years earlier. Ethan regarded me as lucky because my mother had at least told me about her cancer diagnosis before she’d died. From his father he’d inherited a three-bedroom apartment on Roosevelt Island, just one subway stop and a short walk from Central Park. Ethan sublet my room to me for $667, a remarkably low rent for a building with a doorman, pool, and gym.

Riverside

Photographs by Brody Hartman

Once we had settled into the new post-Helene normal, I felt called to venture into Asheville’s beloved River Arts District to document the storm’s aftermath. I wanted to honor the artisans, artists, and small-business owners who have poured their souls into this vibrant, creative community. The scale of the devastation and the sheer power of wind and water and mud were almost beyond comprehension.

Crossroads

Imani Perry on the South’s Vital Place in America’s Identity

The South is made to carry the nation’s slop jar. That’s deliberate, because then the United States doesn’t have to actually contend with all of its violence. We just put the blame on that region where bad stuff happens and where those backward people are. I don’t think it’s incidental, either, that it is the Blackest region culturally (and demographically) speaking. So it is at once seen as the most racist and the Blackest.

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Lost and Found

I want to be a good man, a good son, but that’s hard to pull off when it’s 100 degrees and feels like 115 because of the 90 percent humidity—current conditions in southeast Georgia. I’ve come home to visit my eighty-two-year-old mother and assuage some of my guilt for not being here fifty weeks out of the year.

Timing

A broken clock, a chance encounter, a long-distance relationship

Blues in Black and White

There’s a small but strong subculture of partner dance in New York City, grounded in a love of blues music, the desire to express oneself physically, and the joy of communicating through touch. These photos were taken at public dances and nightclubs in Manhattan between 2015 and 2019.

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Blind History

Tiffany Griffin on America’s Narrow View of Africa

China is racist. Russia is racist. The US is racist. . . . Africans need to bet on each other. The Black Diaspora and the Global South need to bet on and support each other.

Down in the Valley

Wendy Liu on the Tech Industry’s Power to Divide Us

Once I saw the development of new technology in class terms—how a particular kind of technology gives one group of people power over another—it started to feel more sinister.