The light was fading fast when I spotted the truck out of the corner of my eye. I’d seen some good sets of bumper stickers over the years, but knew that few of them could compare with this one for sheer quantity. Turning my car around, though, I realized that I was in the sort of neighborhood in which strangers taking photographs are asking for trouble. (More…)
In light of the praise from colleagues and friends, it feels heretical to confess my ambivalence towards Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015). There is a lot that makes it special. A lesbian love story that ends well, released at Christmas (aka Academy Awards season) feels like cause for celebration—even if films focused on queer women should be a commonplace occurrence. (More…)
Everyone is a photographer now. So went the refrain, inside editorial rooms, in the United States, as smartphones began to proliferate, in 2007-8. Seeing dollar signs in the rise of citizen journalism, eager to shed editorial staff, reporters would now be required to shoot their own pieces, as well as write them. (More…)
Angela Merkel was just playing catch-up. By the time she announced Germany’s new open borders policy last summer (before retreating, a week or so later,) the slogan “Refugees Welcome” was already several years old. Plastered throughout Berlin, particularly the city’s heavily Muslim central neighborhoods, it was the anti-Swastika. (More…)
Forest Haven Asylum is the most disturbing place I’ve ever visited. Maybe that’s why I felt compelled to return there repeatedly. Nothing could undo the human atrocities the asylum witnessed in its seven decades of existence. Maybe documenting their horrific legacy could show people how terribly wrong the ideology behind the asylum system really is. (More…)
The Russians are here. The echo chamber couldn’t be any larger. From Beirut to Washington, everyone has been repeating the same thing. Referring to Moscow’s military build-up in Syria, you can understand the surprise. For the first time in fifteen years, Russia had comitted military assets to the War on Terror. Or so it appears. (More…)
Your rewards taste old and rotten, like something from the last century, your promises are worthless. “Back in my school days my parents and teachers always told me I would never amount to anything! I guess they were right… (More…)
Journalism is where you find it. One of the maxims upon which Souciant was founded, the idea was as much about expressing the aesthetic considerations influencing the magazine’s editorial policy, as much as it was an attempt to stake out how different our content is from other online publications. (More…)
How do people cope with the sheer amount of information that bombards them every day? So much of the world seems to be in grave peril. Many are depressed to the point of paralysis. How, then, can we still “speak for hope, as long as it doesn’t mean suppressing the nature of the danger? Social media provide some important clues. (More…)
I spend a lot of my time thinking about and writing about Jews. Much of my work takes place within the confines of the Jewish community, but I also try and engage the wider world with Jewish issues. That often leads me to publishing think pieces and reviews in a range of ‘non-Jewish’ publications such as the The Guardian, The Independent and more. (More…)
Z is “no more about Greece than The Battle of Algiers was about Algeria,” said Roger Ebert, in 1969. Ebert spotted parallels with the United States and South Vietnam, and last night, in the industrial city of Faisalabad, I spotted more than a few with Pakistan. Indeed, the legendary drama feels timeless in its portrayal of political crises, and elites willing to undermine democracy. (More…)