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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Nina Kim. Coming up on Forum, Kathy Ryan was longtime director of photography at the New York Times Magazine and for nearly four decades shaped the way we witnessed history. January 6th, wars abroad, the impacts of COVID-19 and 9-11. We'll talk to Ryan about storytelling through images. What makes a good photograph when everyone carries a camera in their pocket and we're inundated by them?
And we want to hear from you. What's a photograph that stands out in your mind? Join us. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. You might remember the post-9-11 issue of the New York Times Magazine showing two beams of light where the Twin Towers stood. Or even before that, the 1991 Sebastián Salgado photo of Kuwaiti oil fields on fire.
Kathy Ryan was the Times Magazine's Director of Photography from 1987 until her retirement last year. She has shaped the way we see monumental moments in history, like the pandemic or January 6th, and the way we reflect on them as part of the team behind the 1619 Project.
This hour, we talked to Ryan about the power of a still photograph to cut through a sea of images we're exposed to and create a shared experience in these times. Is there a photo that stands out in your memory? Kathy Ryan joins me now. Welcome to Forum, Kathy. Hi, thank you so much. Thanks, Mina. So have you found that there is a feeling like a worry among people in the industry that the power of a single photograph today has somehow diminished?
Yes, I do think there's a worry, and mainly because this generation, for the first time in history, is looking at hundreds, if not thousands, of images a day on the phone in their pockets. So I think the challenge is to make pictures that will have staying power.
and that people will remember that will stop them in that flood of imagery. So I do think, I mean, you've asked, obviously, the crucial question right now. It's a challenge, I mean, for sure. And so what does it take? What makes a good photograph that makes someone stop and hold their attention? You know, there are several things. First and foremost, I think emotional power.
So, if you had to say the most important element, it would be the emotion that it evokes in the viewer who sees the picture. To get that, to reach that, to make a picture that's powerful, you need to be able to take life, the chaos of life often unfolding, particularly with news imagery, as you're working, as the photographer's making the picture, and need to take it and somehow compose it and frame it and create
somehow sees it where a great photographer can call your attention to what he or she wants you to see in the image. So in other words, it's all about emphasizing. You know, Larry Fink, who passed away about a year ago, brilliant photographer, said this wonderful quote where he said that he always quoted Lisette Modell, his mentor, great photographer before him, who said something like, a photograph is
don't forget it's a translation of what's happening. So it's always in the photographer's hands. It's some kind of translation because people seeing the scene that's happening will see it and frame it differently. So composition is huge, and composition could mean, you know, a rigorous, robust kind of almost what I think of magnum-esque composition where there's lots of diagonals and maybe the photographer's going in close and the drama in the scene is heightened.
The other big element in making a great photo, in service to, again, making it as powerful emotionally and having it say what you want it to say, the other great element is light. Of course, it's always about light. And there it's about two things. I mean, again, I'm oversimplifying all of this, but people spend a lifetime trying to understand.
work within the element of light, but it's about... Yeah, exactly. It's either seeing natural light, so it's somebody seeing the natural light defining the scene, whether it's the side of someone's face, or whether it's illuminating a particular face in a crowd, or whether it's the late afternoon light somehow heightening the feeling of time passing, or
Or it's artificial light that the photographer brings to the scene. And then there, of course, it's working with strobe or flash and light.
The photographer is bringing the light, again, in service to emphasizing what they want you to see in that picture. So I think emotion, composition, and light are three biggies. Yeah, and then, as you say, achieves its purpose, it sounds like. One of the things that I also really loved you saying about the power of a still photograph at a time when we see so many more now in the course of the day is that it can make...
People slow down a bit? I think absolutely it can. You know, pictures often have several, or the best pictures often have several layers to them. You know, it's not like there's just one thing. So a very good picture will cause you to stop and stare at it and try to understand the nuances in it. You know, some pictures, you grasp them immediately. And again, to get back to your first question,
the challenge today with people seeing so many pictures, they're swiping on their phone, right? They're seeing them quickly, literally come, you know, down the river, kind of flooding by. And that's different. You know, we used to have...
a job that, you know, there was a luxury to it that once they opened up, the reader opened up the printed magazine, they're on the page. They're on that spread. And of course we worked hard to produce the best possible pictures. We could run them large. The caption's important because the caption acts like glue. That also holds people onto the page. And that's one of the important things today is that people putting out pictures of, let's say, newsworthy events, it's important to caption them.
And that, of course, being at the New York Times for years, that's in my DNA now. But I think that, and well, actually, I would also say to anyone, even people who are, you know, making pictures solely for the family album, you want to caption those because years later, the people who knows who's in the picture, they're not around. You know, so that's like another one I often, and my family's guilty of it too. We have pictures that we don't know who they are.
So whether it's personal pictures or news pictures, the captions help. But most importantly, to get back to, obviously, the visual element, the way in which the photographer kind of renders the scene, what he or she chooses to leave out, chooses to put in, chooses to go close in on. Many, many, many decisions happen. And that's where the best photographers develop, you know, for want of a better word, a style. Yeah.
They're making pictures all the time. And eventually, the equivalent of like their voice and writing, visually there's a certain thing they do. The most obvious being the choice between black and white and color, right? That's a big choice. And many of the best photographers lean heavily into one or the other for their signature work. And that changes things. Whether you're working in vivid color, you know, in a...
In, let's say, a war scene, so two great contemporary photographers who cover combat are Lindsay Adario, who's worked for the Times Magazine for over 20 years, or about 20 years, worked with her a long time, and Paolo Pellegrini, two different great photographers with very different approaches.
All of Paolo's work just about is black and white. The pictures have a sooty kind of deep chiaroscuro, chalky quality almost. They seem sometimes like charcoal drawings. Lindsay's the opposite. From day one, she knew she wanted to...
to photograph in color. And just about everything she's done, the vast majority has been in color because she doesn't want to abstract a scene. She wants it to be as vividly real as possible. So that's also when you look at their pictures side by side. Or let's say for people listening now, if you picture in your mind's eye a black and white photo, advantage.
In terms of emotion, it often eliminates unnecessary information. So if there's a dramatic scene and somebody, let's say a mourner at a funeral is wearing red, that might interrupt what you're trying to say where you just want gesture, expression, facial expression, body language. On the other hand, black and white...
isn't real, is it? The whole irony of that is black and white feels realer. That's the hardest one to explain. That's like the paradox of it. And whereas color is obviously vividly real. And sometimes color is harder because, particularly again, if we're talking right now about, let's say, war photography. And sadly, all the years I was at the Times, there were always wars to cover. The entire 39 years. But
In color, you would see the red of the blood. Like sometimes it would bring elements into the picture that would be harsh and difficult. And maybe you want that, don't want it. So anyway, just color is also emotional. But then again, color, it's not always as much in your control. I feel like I'm just talking quickly about, you know, obviously. It's fascinating, yeah, to think about it in these ways.
We're talking with Kathy Ryan, former director of photography at the New York Times Magazine for 37 of her 39 years at the Times. She directed photography there. And listeners, you're invited to join the conversation. What's a photograph that stands out in your mind that you remember and why? Maybe even a New York Times Magazine cover that has stayed with you. Do you like to take photos? Are you a photographer? What would you like to ask Kathy Ryan about the craft? And
And maybe there is a personal photo in the family album that's special to you or a photograph or caption you wish you had. You can tell us by emailing forum at kqed.org, finding us on our social channels, Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. We're at KQED Forum. And you can call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786.
For nearly four decades, Kathy Ryan shaped the way that we witnessed history with the New York Times Magazine. And Abhijit writes on Instagram, I solely grew up on the aesthetics offered by great editors like Kathy Ryan, Michelle Stevenson, Bobby Burroughs, Marianne Golan, and so many more. You taught us how to see.
Another listener, Grace on Discord, writes, when I was in high school, I had a teacher who made sure we understood the impact the Vietnam War had at home. Seeing photos of the Kent State shootings for the first time really helped me to understand how much weight the Vietnam War really began to have on the everyday American. We're coming up on a break, and I definitely want to get into more of what you did, how you approached Vietnam.
Being the director of photography at the New York Times Magazine, but really quickly, when people say you taught us how to see, I think you have heard that said to you many times. What does that mean to you to teach people how to see? Oh, boy. I don't know. I guess I think all I've had is teaching them how to see. I think trying, one of the things I've tried to do always is
was make pictures, commission pictures, bring into being pictures by designing the photographers, the ideas and all, that would have that staying power. And that's sometimes by challenging people, like running. We were lucky at the time, or lucky at the Times Magazine still are, that we have really thoughtful readership, right? And they want to stare at a picture, I think, when it's a good, strong, layered image. So maybe teaching people to see was trying to come up with ideas that
for the photos that were fresh and new, and that's always interesting, like trying to come up with something, an approach to a story that others hadn't thought of yet. Plus the magazine comes out. We had a 10-day lead time when it would go on press, so we couldn't cover the news directly. By the time the magazine is publishing, the idea has to be out ahead of it. Anyway. More with Kathy Ryan right after the break. I'm Mina Kim.
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You're listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking about what makes a good photograph when everyone carries a camera in their pocket and we're inundated by them and how to tell stories through images. And we're talking about it with Kathy Bryan, former director of photography at the New York Times Magazine.
For 37 years, she was at the Times for 39 years and retired last year. She's also keynote speaker and co-curator of the 2025 Catchlight Visual Storytelling Summit in San Francisco this weekend. And listeners, you have a chance to ask Kathy about what it's like to take photos, to be a photographer in this day and age and capturing some of the most difficult moments of our times.
And tell us about a photograph that stands out in your mind that you remember and why. The email address is forum at kqed.org. Find us on our social channels at KQED Forum. Call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786. And Rodney writes, the photo of Kamala Harris's niece watching her accept the Democratic nomination for president was a recent photo that significantly impacted me personally.
Just before the break, you were talking about the power and the urgency of teaching people how to see and what's all involved with that. And really, as the director of photography at The New York Times said,
Even before a photo is taken, right, Kathy, it sounds like it involved a lot of curation, a lot of conceptualizing of how to tell the story before the photo is taken. Can you talk about that and maybe with an example of one of your projects or a photo that you love? Sure, absolutely. Sure.
You know, maybe one example I could start with is, and I think you mentioned it at the top of the broadcast, was our Remains of the Day cover photo after September 11 happened.
When September 11 happened, most of the staff, the magazine staff, got to the office and obviously started brainstorming about which pictures to assign, which stories to assign. Adam Moss, the editor, had decided to immediately... We were going to rip up the magazine that was due to go to press, the magazine at that time, and still goes to press on Friday night. That issue comes out a week and a half later, the following weekend. And...
Almost immediately, maybe that day or the very next morning, Adam said an historic event. He said it like, I think it was that day that this is not only a tremendous news event, this is a historic news event. Memorials will be made to this day. He then said to Janet Froelich, the creative director at the time,
talk to artists and have them come up with an idea for what the memorial should be to mark this dreadful day. And Janet then found out about two artists, Julian Laverdiere and Paul Miota,
who had had a studio in the towers, but they luckily weren't there that day, but they had thought a lot about the towers. And they had the idea for the two beams of light coming up, at which point then it's like, okay, how do we bring, there was clearly going to be a photo illustration, how do we bring that idea to life?
to go to press within 48 hours or so, whatever it was, by the end of that week. So by then it was probably Wednesday. And Fred Conrad, a staff photographer at the New York Times, had made one of the first pictures, I think it was the next day, a sort of beautiful end of day, dark kind of midnight blues. And there was a horizontal beam of light, just sort of reflection on the water. And Janet, looking at it,
realize, okay, if in Photoshop, which again, we would never do for a news photo, but this would clearly be a rendering of something to come in the future. Turn them sideways and we did the two beams of light. I mention that because there we were under enormous deadline pressure, problem solving,
cover image for that historic issue. And I just still cannot get over, you know, Adam foreseeing almost immediately after it happened, there will be memorials. And then, you know, tasking us to come up with a thought for that. And as we know, it is the memorial that's reenacted every year. So that would be, you know, one example. But then, you know, again, there's a wide range. You know, when we...
talked just before about war coverage, you know, that then led to wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, the U.S. was in Afghanistan 20 years, and after a number of years, the challenge for people in photo editing is how do you keep readers paying attention after you've seen people do, oh, I don't want to say, how do you say, it gets harder. At first, there's shock when they see what's happening. Let's say there's, you know, Russia invades Afghanistan,
Ukraine, but then as the war goes on, and in the case of Afghanistan, it went on quite a long time, you still need to keep attention focused on it. And that was a case where Ashley Gilbertson, terrific photographer, came up with this idea that he pitched to us for a photo essay about
what he was calling the bedrooms of the fallen. And his interest was in the fact, at that point, the war had been going for a number of years. I think it was 2010 when we published it. And his idea was to show not just the soldiers dying, because that was being what, you know, had been, was still being strongly covered by combat photographers, but to show the
the families and the price they've paid. And he just started cold calling the families of the deceased soldiers, most of whom are young, or died young, and he asked to photograph their bedrooms. And it was an astounding photo essay. I hope some of the people listening remember because as the families would say yes, it became very apparent that the bedrooms had been turned into shrines.
the parents did not have the heart to break down the bedrooms. So even if it had been several years,
It was still what we ultimately titled it Shrines Down the Hall. And then when you looked in the bedrooms, they were loaded with information and character because so often, again, people tend to forget these are 18- and 19-year-olds who are dying, and their bedrooms still looked like the bedroom of a teenager with the banners or the pennants or the sports insignia or the rock posters. And we ran a beautiful portfolio of that, and that was a case where...
The conceptualizing beforehand
The photographer had the idea, which was then, of course, magazine signed off on it. We then supported it, basically gave him the assignment to pursue it because it took a while to make all the calls and get all the families on board and go and visit. But yeah, so I think sometimes it's keeping people paying attention to a story unfolding. Another example of that is the refugee crisis all over the world all the time. And you do want to try to find different ways to tell it.
And Lindsay Adaria once did an incredible thing for us, and there was a VR component also where Jake Silverstein had the idea to do the displaced, to choose several children from different crisis zones.
around the world. I remember this one. Yeah, remember that? And she photographed and went in closely on the children, and one of them was the most, I thought, I mean, they were all powerful, but the most memorable was the cover. It was a little boy named Chawul who was, I think, nine years old, and she made this amazing image of him standing, if you could imagine, like a short...
flat, old, thin wooden boat, like a handcrafted wooden boat. And he's just using a stick as an oar. And he's clearly in a, what would you call it, like a
A calm body of water. It's got some almost like lily pad like things and grasses growing out of it. And there's a blue-gray, heavy, heavy with clouds sky. And he's slowly kind of paddling his way through. It's a deeply emotional affecting picture. Very, very sensitive. There's no drama in the picture. She basically photographed him in the swamp that he was fishing in because he's
This is all in South Sudan, by the way. I should have prefaced that saying in South Sudan. And fighters had swept into his village. He had fled into fleeing. He was with, I think, the grandmother, but he had become separated from his mother. So when Lindsay first met him, here's this child. He had not yet been reunited with his mother. That's another whole story where a while later, Lindsay was able to find a mother in a different refugee camp. Not even on that story. It was when she went back.
You know, in there, it's a case of, it's a very, it is not a harsh combat picture, kind of the opposite, but it's about fragility, the vulnerability and the fragility of children. And then Lindsay, probably some of the people listening remember the extraordinary picture she made for the New York Times Daily, not for the magazine where I was, but...
One morning I look at the home page at home and there was like, oh my God, it was shortly after the invasion in Ukraine and it was the family that was mortared. I think it was the mother and two children and Lindsay got that picture and that was clearly, she was at herself enormous risk in that moment, dashing out there across the street to make the picture, which was as difficult a picture as it gets. Then there's discussion, as you can imagine, once you have a picture like that amongst the editors,
how to play it, whether it's page one in the paper, top of the home page, or at the top of the digital treatment on the mobile device. But yeah, I'm probably talking too much in the answer. But a lot of it's thinking of new ways. And then sometimes it's also really trying to anticipate. A lot of it's anticipating what might unfold with that assignment. And again, here we're talking heavily today of obviously the photojournalistic ones.
But I remember as January 6th was coming up, and again, this just happens to be mentioning Ashley Gilbertson, we were brainstorming who to send to cover it. We wanted to cover it. Again, not as news coverage, direct. That's not what we do because it's the week in the magazine. It's a week, yeah. Yeah, much longer lead time. But it was looking like it would be a remarkable day. We anticipated that.
And that was a great moment where in the brainstorming, there was an incredible team of photo editors at the magazine. And sometimes choosing the photographer, which is the most important decision, right? Who you choose to go and tell that story visually. We'll have like a creative brainstorm. Sometimes an idea would come to one of us immediately. I remember talking to Amy Kellner, who was working on it, and saying, this is not a moment yet.
For a new photographer, because I always love cross-assigning, putting people on assignments that aren't typical to what they normally do, or giving someone their first big assignment, because sometimes you get that wonderful spark of, you know, just the...
and what they bring to it. But clearly this day, and this was where I did feel good about having been there so long, I just thought this requires something else. And she said, how about Ashley Gilbertson? I said, absolutely, because I said there has to be somebody seasoned. He's just right. And to make a long story short, he was there when all hell broke loose at the Capitol.
He ran from where those speeches were happening, which weren't right there, right? And then hopped over into the building. He's also a distance runner, so he had the athletic facility. But then that—so he turned around. Some people may remember just before he went in, and he made the cover image of the teeming mobs just before he went in the Capitol. And then, of course, he had years of experience. He made that decision to go in with the rioters.
And then he made the picture, and I hope people remember this, of Officer Goodman. Remember the police officer in the Capitol who held his arms up and single-handedly backed up and held off the crowd so that they wouldn't go in to where the congresspeople were? So as the rioters were chasing him, he single-handedly backed up.
kind of sort of led them to the side. And I just, that picture was the one that I think was one of the most iconic of the day. And that was a moment where, how do you say this? Thank goodness there was a moment of heroism, right? To have this bravery. Because sometimes what's also hard is
The anonymity of moments like that where you having a person that this is another important one in this age of the profundity of images, the immensity of the number that you see in a day, having a character to deal with. You know, in Lindsay Adario, when after Ukraine had been going on a year or two years, whatever, it's like, what do we do next? What do we do for our next project?
Ukraine coverage, she said we should do the children. And she knew this 11-year-old on the front line whose mother was working in the hospitals. And we assigned that. And really, I remember strongly thinking we should go in deep on one character and not a series because then it propels the reader looking at their phone to continue on. They want to know what happens to this 11-year-old. And she did a beautiful body of work on that. Do you
think photography can be a powerful force pushing back on this era of post-truth politics, even with all the technology that actually makes us question now the veracity of the images we're seeing? That's the toughest question because we don't know the answer to that, right? Like the toughest is with AI and the
in the assumption of veracity, it's unfolding. And I wish I had answers on that. That's the hardest one. It's changing so quickly. We can't assume any longer that what we're looking at
is what was the real portrayal. And we had that for so many years. We knew that readers looked at a picture and accepted it as evidence. And now I think people just have to be very astute about who's the messenger, what news organization, what photojournalist. You have to know and trust people.
The person telling you that story, showing you that story, that you know it's someone who wouldn't use AI. Obviously, the New York Times wouldn't. You have to know it's a media organization that has strict ethical guidelines. You know, we have strict ethical guidelines at the magazine. And I'm sure there's interesting conversations going on there now that I'm not part of how to deal with this, you know, this ever-shifting. Yeah.
interpretation of photos. Well, this listener, Peter, writes on Instagram, this is actually about the photographer. Less an individual photo than a photographer stands out. Andre Cortez, as Henri Cartier-Bresson said when asked to choose his favorite Cortez image, I choose the one he takes next. And less an individual photographer than the great collective ongoing photographic project. The world was brought close and held at lens length. The annihilation of space by time in increments of one one-twenty-fifth of a second. Yes.
I love that quote. I know that I choose the one he takes next. Yeah, that's remarkable. Well, the work of Kertesz that I love, and he lived, right, was it one or two Washington Square North? Could somebody Google that for me as I'm talking? Seriously. And if I remember correctly, he...
Right. There's this beautiful set of pictures he made after his wife died, his longtime wife, showing a little glass figurine on the windowsill. Imagine a little roundish oval head and shoulders, a tiny glass head and shoulders, almost like bust, but it's, what would you call it, almost like a size of a paperweight figurine.
And he did a series of beautiful Polaroids. Of course, at that point, he's quite elderly, of that sitting on the windowsill. So what you would see come through the glass would get altered. It was a love poem. Anyway, Kertesz, I think, was a hero to so many of us, and in part as a poetic photographer. And I appreciate that question because so much of what I'm talking about right now is
Poetic photojournalists, for sure, but covering very tough, right, tough unfolding stories. Well, April writes, remember all the adorable cat videos early on on the Internet? Silly as it sounds, my favorite New York Times Magazine cover shows a very mad white kitten with wet spiky fur on a blue background staring straight into the camera. The story was, so the Internet didn't turn out the way we hoped.
Yes, that photo is by Maurizio Catalan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. Maurizio works closely with Pierpaolo, works closely with Maurizio. And on that one, oh man, that's also one of my favorite covers.
It was one of the funniest, the intention with the cover. So we were brainstorming. It was, I think, our annual special issue theme to tech and so forth. And we were looking at the Internet. And as you just said, the problems with the Internet, what do we do? And one of the designers, I think it was Ben Grandjeanette in the art department, said, why don't we do an angry cat?
At which point I was like, yeah, Maurizio Catalan. And I reached out to him. I'd worked with him before. He's fantastic. As you know, he is a fine artist, just usually marching to his own beat, doing his own magnificent work that's shown in museums. But he loves a magazine assignment. He always rises to the occasion. What I think people don't know, he can work on incredible deadlines.
I described what we needed. And then the way that that works is he then and Pierpelo put together a bunch of mock-ups, as it were, you know, so a bunch of sketches and kind of images. And I can't remember exactly how long, but very, very quickly, within a day or two, they turned around and
an incredible series and that was far and away the winner, that angry cat. And it's definitely one of our best covers. And that was, think about it, not the easiest assignment. The cat on the internet's been seen a million times and he just completely took it to a whole other place.
We're talking about memorable New York Times Magazine covers with the longtime director of photography at the New York Times Magazine, Kathy Ryan, and also just the power of photography in this day and age. And you and our listeners are sharing your reflections. I see your calls and comments. I'll get to them right after the break. The email address, forum at kqed.org, the phone number 866-733-6786. Stay with us. I'm Mina Kim.
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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. We're talking with Kathy Ryan, the longtime director of photography at the New York Times Magazine, who for nearly four decades shaped the way we witnessed history and everyday life. And you, our listeners, are joining the conversation with your questions and comments. Let me go to Jill in Berkeley on the line. Hi, Jill. Thanks for waiting.
Oh, thank you. Yeah, this topic has such resonance for me because I worked as a photojournalist in Britain for many years, and I know that the images that I saw from Vietnam were deeply impactful for me and really, I mean, stay with me to this day. I mean, the images of My Lai, for example, the little girl running away from the village toward the photographer, which I think that image probably seared itself into my brain and to many people's brains and gave us an insight into...
what really was happening on the ground in Vietnam that we would never have known about. And that is the power of photojournalism. I mean, that's when an image can do that, when it can educate and inform us and change our lives and change our direction. I mean, that's what I always... I don't know that I accomplished that in my career, but that was always the...
the guiding light and the guiding principle. And things have changed so much now. There's very little trust towards photographers, you know, because of the way photography is used now. So I think the landscape is very different. But I know that for me, those...
Yeah, images that brought a change in my thinking. Those are the important ones. Jill, thanks for that. You know, Kathy, Jill's right. Journalism is a hard profession these days. Photojournalism is very hard. I imagine you still encourage young people to do it. And if you do, how do you tell them to pursue it? With what approach? I think the most important probably is to...
work all the time, right? This is a demanding field. It really is like a calling. And to focus on certain stories, it does seem that with photojournalism, the more expertise that you develop, the
out in the field telling certain kinds of stories, both develop in terms of the craft of it, the look of your pictures, your lighting system if you have one, or the kind of compositional signature and touch you have, but also to have something that you're passionate about, that you care about. And again and again, the memorable bodies of work
come from photographers who care deeply about something. LaToya Ruby Frazier cares deeply about labor issues and what happens in towns when industry pulls out. And we did a great cover story she pitched on the closing down of GM plants in Lordstown, Ohio.
Stephanie Sinclair, a great photojournalist, cared deeply about women and girls and issues affecting them. And probably some of you know the work she did, oh, it's 10, 15 years ago now, on child marriage. There are so many places, yeah, right, around the world where girls are being married incredibly young. And
She just, she was so passionate about that issue herself. So I do think often it's somebody that they're in pursuit of something. And they have faith. You know, this question of whether photos can have an impact now. You know, the impact that...
The little girl in Vietnam, her after she'd been hit with a napalm running down the street, every newspaper magazine in the world had that picture. It was more concentrated. But again, as we're saying, there's so many more images. It's harder to have that kind of picture. That said, people are still looking at pictures all the time, all the time. And I think the best photographers have faith in
that if they work hard enough, they will make a picture that will affect change, that will somehow provoke some kind of change when necessary, whether it's anti-war statement, whether it's a political statement or crises at home. Many photographers have done terrific work. Philip Montgomery, looking at the drug crisis in the U.S. Obviously, photographers did great work, particularly Philip on the COVID-19 issue.
So they pour their hearts into it, thinking that, you know, with COVID-19, we got Philip into the hospitals, nine of the 11 public hospitals in New York City, very shortly after it hit New York, almost immediately.
And Shannon Simon was the picture I was working on that garnered that access. And it was so important then for people to see what was going on in the hospitals to truly understand why they had to stay home. This was even when everybody was just being asked to stay home, much less put a mask on. It was pre-vaccine and all. You know, and I think his photos helped that cause. And then we got him into a funeral home in the Bronx.
And Debbie Samuelson was the picture editor at work on that. And it was the Ferrenger Brothers funeral home. And the pictures he made were heartbreaking but necessary. You know, so I think for a photojournalist and Philip, this was all part of – these were all signed by us. But they're part and parcel of the ongoing look at the, like, fissures and problems in American society that he's building essentially like a lifetime body of work about.
Well, let me go to caller Amy in Berkeley next. Hi, Amy, you're on. Hi, thank you for this amazing discussion of photography and the minds of photographers. My father, Jack Sims, was an amazing photographer, never professionally, but amazing. But one of the photographs I wanted to mention that is also so important in our family and that I've shared with others and with my students is
is the photograph that he was in in 1964 that was in the San Francisco Chronicle. And it was a picture of the protests at the, actually his at the Cadillac dealership on Auto Row. And there were huge demonstrations and sit-ins and hundreds of people were arrested and spent significant time in jail and prison.
in the 1960s in San Francisco for protests against racism and racism in hiring. And when we think of the civil rights movement, we really think of it happening in the South, but it was happening here in San Francisco too. And it's amazing that this photograph and me being able to share this photograph is a way for me to share with my students who are college students and high school students
this history that happened right here. Yeah. So, and then also, yeah, my father passed away a couple years ago and I will never tire of looking through his thousands of photographs because it's,
like still looking through his eyes. Oh, Amy, thank you so much for sharing that. You know, Kathy, Amy's point reminds me of something that you said. You wished you had a photo of your father working as a carpenter, is that right? Or in construction? Yes, good memory. And we have exactly one, and it's just a snapshot that has him, my father, and another man on a job. But he was a carpenter and construction worker. Oh,
all his adult life, and there are no pictures of that. So I really do beg everybody, make sure you get pictures either of yourselves at work or family members at work, because I think so many people, they never saw a picture of their mom or dad in the workplace. It's a huge portion of people's lives.
So, yes, I did mention that because it's just always been kind of the holy grail. And even that one snapshot with this other person in it, who we don't know who it is, but at least somebody he worked with. But there's no other – we never had anything. And I can – so it's all – it's just in my memory what he would look like coming in at the end of a long day out on a job. And I don't know. I'm just a big believer in that.
Yeah.
I don't know. I just think that's important and it's something good, especially now that one of the gifts of having a camera in your pocket at all times with the cell phone is that you can do that. I do think...
It gives people a chance to do it in a way they never could before. So why not? You know, I'm not talking just selfies. Okay, we have plenty of selfies, but more just a documentary image of somebody doing what they do. Ordinary as it gets. You know, obviously try to make a nice picture, but yeah, I think that's crucial. Well, this sister wants to know, what is Kathy Ryan's favorite thing to photograph? The most interesting, the most challenging. What does she love most about the graphic?
Okay, I'm going to give you... The first time I started really making pictures was at the New York Times building, which is a beautiful building that we had moved into, I don't know, it's probably 13, 14 years ago now, I forget exactly. It's designed by Renzo Piano. So picture this, a skyscraper, clear glass, not tinted green or gray like most skyscrapers. And...
It's completely sheathed by white ceramic rods, which would translate into beautiful sunlight causing like striping shadows. I'm always, always drawn to shadow and light. So there's no doubt I'm a photographer drawn to light and shadow. And I started making pictures at the times. I'd sometimes do it.
During the workday, I'd come in early to get the early morning light on the east side of the building. I'd stay late till the sunset, and it was long, terrific, you know, in the summer months on the west side. Anyway, I...
I loved it. I ended up calling it Office Romance and posting on Instagram. I fell in love with Instagram early on. And really, it was a lot of fun. And I was celebrating my co-workers, and I loved that, in that light, which gave everything a very kind of cinematic, film noir-ish quality.
I would try to like, I would sometimes think, okay, I want to get the kind of movie star quality of this person, the essence of who they are, the most kind of beautiful or serious or contemplative, that broad sunlight, which is, again, very unusual in a contemporary skyscraper because of the clear glass. It was like a film set all the time. And I went in on the weekends all the time just to commune with the building myself when I would do the still life pictures.
of just ordinary office stuff. So anyway, that's what I fell in love with. But now, since I've left the Times building, I lost my muse. It was very hard for me to leave. I loved my job, but I also loved building my muse. But anyway, but now I've lived in Soho in Manhattan downtown for many, many years.
My muse is now downtown, and again, it's about shadow and light, and I'm photographing shadows around the city, people's shadows light, and I'm trying... The one thing that's dramatically different is the Office of Romance work was contemplative and moody. It was more like people...
going into themselves or some have watched by me. I don't know. There was like a quality to it that was poetic and quieter and solemn and silent. But the city, of course, is the opposite. So I'm trying to get velocity,
the frenetic quality, the tremendous energy, the huge amounts of people. I've photographed thousands of people and it's always their shadows. No one's identifiable. And I love that in this day and age when everybody's picture is out there on the internet. And the city's immensely beautiful. You got the light bouncing off the East River and the Hudson and the buildings are lower in the lower part of Manhattan. So this is where I'm having a blast being out there. I'm a street photographer now. I'm totally a street photographer.
I love me for my listeners. We're talking with Kathy Ryan and you're listening to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. So then, Kathy, how did you know it was the right time to move on from your role as director of photography? Oh, it's the hardest to answer. I loved my job. It was very hard to move on. I love the people I worked with.
How did I know? It just was time. It took a while. It just was time. There's terrific staff there. Jessica Dimson, who's the director of photography, is phenomenal. And Gail Bickler, creative director. I didn't want to leave them, but it's also, they're doing extraordinary work and it was time for me to go out. And also, honestly, the calling to just do more of my own photography. I wanted to have that, to give myself that gift to do that.
And, you know, it just, it was time. I can't, I don't know how to say, I know, you know, just also want to get other people bringing in new ideas and really, who knows? Yeah. Let me go to Idina in Napa. Hi, Idina, you're on. Hello. I just want to bring up Herbie Milk.
I was in San Francisco in that time. I lived there for 19 years. I remember going to this photo store in the Castro where Harvey Milk was working at this photography shop.
Before he was a politician, much before, he was a photographer. And he was in the counter doing photographs, passing photographs, doing film or whatever. I was there for him to look at my camera and to give me pointers. I don't remember that.
But before he got killed, before he was a politician, he was journaling De Castro and bringing up stand up for the people loud and clear. That's what he got picked to be a politician. Well, Idina, thank you for sharing that reflection and bringing in Harvey Milk.
You know, this listener wants to know, I think they do want to be able to look at the world in a deeper way. And they say, what advice would Kathy give to listeners who want to look at the world with a more artistic eye and see the world in that deeper way she's talking about?
You know, I think the advice I would give is to just keep looking at visuals and not just photography. Look at painting, look at sculpture, look at film, look at all the different ways in which the world is seen, witnessed, portrayed, because looking at sculpture will help you every single time you're photographing a person and movement, the way the body moves, torsion, you know, figure ground relationships.
Looking at palette, looking at the color of your favorite painters will educate your eye as you're out there, whether you're doing the most, let's say, documentary in the field work or doing something where, you know, it brings in more studied kind of approach. I think that's, and looking at film and the movement, you know, there's also more and more, I think there's a kind of, what would you call it, like a collective concept.
consciousness of imagery. I love when pictures are made that evoke something in your mind, even if you don't even, it's not immediate or literal, but you know that there's a classical quality to the pose of the person, or there's a look to the light that you think you know. I think the best way to become a better photographer is to care deeply, find a subject, and really, really
pursue that subject and work it to the best that you can, but also to just all the time be looking. Even listening to music, anything that can creatively get your heart beating faster, it will feed the photography. And I think that's something, never lose sight of that.
The more you're walking through a museum, you don't even know sometimes. It may be subliminal, but it definitely informs the looking and the seeing and the selecting of what to emphasize and also the harmonizing. I think, again, life is chaotic and partly what you're bringing is you're kind of imposing some kind of harmony on a scene regardless of whether it's an important newsworthy news breaking scene or a quiet moment of someone, a portrait. Yeah.
You're trying to bring some sense and rhythm to it. Donna writes, a photograph that stands out to me is the woman with a double mastectomy. It was on the cover of the New York Times Magazine decades ago. Another listener, Steve on Discord, writes, photography is so many different things. It's documentary and evidentiary. It's artistic and stylistic. It's technical and visionary.
And Casey on Discord writes,
There are so many comments that came in in response to all of the things that you were saying, Kathy. And I so appreciate you coming on to talk with us today. Terrific. Thank you.
Kathy Ryan, former director of photography at the New York Times Magazine. She was at the Times for 39 years before her retirement last year. She's also keynote speaker and co-curator of the 2025 Catchlight Visual Storytelling Summit in San Francisco this weekend. My thanks to you, our listeners, for sharing your questions and reflections on photography and visual imagery. My thanks as well to Mark Nieto for helping me produce this segment today. You've been listening to Forum. I'm Nina Kim. ♪
Funds for the production of Forum are provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Generosity Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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