@newyorkermag

Abortions in the second or third trimester are rare—the vast majority of abortions in the United States are performed in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy—and when they occur the circumstances tend to be desperate. For nearly a year, the photographer @maggiehshannon regularly visited a clinic in Maryland that offers later-stage abortions and documented what she observed there. See her full photo portfolio at the link in our bio.

February 12, 2024

A cartoon by @victoriarobertscartoonist. #NewYorkerCartoons

February 12, 2024

Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, knew she wanted to work in art from a young age. In college, she double-majored in art history and African American studies; she understood that what she’d been taught was incomplete, because art by Black people was mostly absent from her assigned reading. In the academic world, few people taught Golden anything about Black art, but she had grown up with it, and immersed herself in studying it. At 26, she became the Whitney’s first Black curator. The shows she worked on were unprecedented—and sometimes controversial. But “what the critics missed was that contemporary art was changing, radically and permanently, from a mostly white, high-culture enterprise to something far more diverse and unpredictable,” Calvin Tomkins writes. “Most of the artists in Golden’s shows at the Whitney have become prominent in a transformed art world where, now that the blinders are off, there is no doubt about the importance and centrality of their work in America’s cultural history.” “When I was 15, I decided I wanted to be a curator,” Golden told Tomkins. “I understood that my time was never my own, it had to make sense for others. It had to open up space for others. But I feel that I am where I want to be, doing exactly what I am meant to be doing.” At the link in our bio, read a profile of the curator and museum director who has played a critical role in desegregating the art world. Photograph by @lyleashtonharris for The New Yorker.

February 11, 2024

Robert Cumming, a pioneering wizard of West Coast photo-conceptualism, achieved brief semi-stardom in the 1980s. On the cover of his first self-published book of photographs, “Picture Fictions,” was a work that would become one of his most famous, “Watermelon/Bread.” In it, the titular fruit rests on a patterned plate in a cluttered kitchen. “The scene would be ordinary enough if not for the flank of the watermelon, into which Cumming has nestled a slice of store-bought white bread like some absurdist domestic Excalibur,” Chris Wiley writes. “The picture became something of an aesthetic calling card, encapsulating his work’s goofy rigor and strange cool. His creations seemed to invite the question, ‘What kind of person would bother to make such things?’ ” Tap the link in our bio to read about the thoroughly unpretentious photographer, who is experiencing a much deserved mini-revival. Photographs by Robert Cumming / © 2024 @the_robert_cumming_archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

February 11, 2024

A cartoon by @tysoncole.3000. #NewYorkerCartoons

February 11, 2024

A cartoon by @auntsarahdraws. #NewYorkerCartoons

February 11, 2024

A cartoon by @suerynns. #NewYorkerCartoons

December 31, 2021

During springtime in the far, far north—when the sun breaches the horizon, after months of total darkness—indigenous Greenlandic hunters head out to frozen inlets and get lost in ice and time. For many of the past 35 years, @ragnaraxelsson, an Icelandic photographer, has joined these expeditions, clutching his Leica against the Arctic winds. “In the vastness of Greenland there are places to be found where one gets the distinct impression of being alone in the world, places few people have ever reached,” Axelsson says. “The stillness is overwhelming. The emptiness seems boundless.” In the least accessible areas, sled dogs are irreplaceable. “Unlike a snowmobile, a good trained dog can lead you home in a storm,” Axelsson said. “Engines fail. But the dogs never fail.” Loyal, strong, selfless, uncomplaining—step after frozen step, sled dogs have hauled people to the limits of the earth, at both poles. “There would be no Inuit without the Greenlandic dog,” an elderly indigenous woman told Axelsson. “It has kept us alive for 4,000 years.” The dogs are, in Axelsson’s estimation, “the greatest heroes the North has ever known.” Tap the link in our bio to see more.

December 31, 2021

Is it time to get rid of New Year’s Eve? “Obviously, we can't stop the earth from taking 365 days to go around the sun,” Sarah Miller wrote last year. “But what if our acknowledgment of every new year was merely clerical, like with most any other day?” At the link in our bio, read her pitch, from 2020, to cancel the holiday for good.

December 31, 2021

Bridget Everett moved to New York in 1997, at 26, with no plan, no money, and no prospects. She survived waitressing, karaoke, and the alternative-cabaret circuit before creating and starring in “Somebody Somewhere,” her autobiographical coming-of-middle-age series, premièring this month on HBO. “It’s not every network that’s calling up a perimenopausal woman who sings cabaret to do a TV show,” Everett, now 49, said. “You gotta celebrate the moments.” Tap the link in our bio to read about how Everett mines her dysfunctional childhood to create an outrageous onstage presence that even Amy Schumer says she “could not follow.” Photograph by Mark Lim (@markmarklimlim) for The New Yorker.

December 31, 2021

Smile, Sparky. #NewYorkerCartoons 🖋️ Bruce Eric Kaplan

December 31, 2021

Getting struck by lightning is, famously, pretty rare. In the new fictional short film “Don vs Lightning,” by Johnny Burns and Pier Van Tijn, a fisherman in the Scottish Highlands contends with a strange pattern: getting zapped over and over again. In the film, based on a true story, Don seems unsurprised that nature, or a divine power, might have taken issue with his existence. “Almost two years into an ongoing pandemic, his weary acceptance of the uncontrollable feels familiar,” @jooliaboosh writes. Tap the link in our bio to watch the full film.

December 31, 2021

Stay cozy. #NewYorkerCartoons 🖋️ @cartoonamy

December 30, 2021

“The 10 books here, listed in alphabetical order and representing just a fraction of the year’s excellent crop, are the ones that have most forcefully pulled me off the sofa and into the kitchen,” @helenr writes. “They’re worth the read, but they deserve to get their spines broken and their pages stained, too.” Tap the link in our bio to see the list.

December 30, 2021