‘America Knows Less About Itself At The Very Moment It Needs To Know The Truth’

John Duprey / 1963 Birmingham photograph from NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

BY SUSIE BANIKARIM

In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the Kerner Commission in response to widespread demonstrations over the treatment of Black Americans. The following year, the panel released a report, outlining systemic white racism across society—and sharply criticizing the press’s failure to cover the subject of race. “Along with the country as a whole, the press has too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men’s eyes and white perspective,” the report concluded, calling on newsrooms to hire and promote more Black journalists. A decade later, the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) started a recurring survey to track the news industry’s progress toward inclusion, setting an ambitious goal: that the demographics of newsrooms would mirror those of the broader US population by the year 2000. The survey, which for years served as one of the industry’s primary benchmarks for tracking newsroom representation, was last conducted in 2019. ASNE, later known as the News Leaders Association (NLA), disbanded in 2024.

It’s hard to imagine a more apt metaphor for the state of Black representation in media today. At a time when the Trump administration is aggressively dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and targeting communities of color, many newsrooms have all but abandoned promises they made during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 to increase racial diversity in coverage and staffing. As CJR reported last month, 76 percent of journalists identified as white in a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, compared with roughly 58 percent of Americans who identified as white in the most recent census. “You saw the industry making all these promises, but we are in a moment where we’ve got this backlash that is really exposing which of those promises were values and which ones were window dressing or branding,” Errin Haines, the president of the National Association of Black Journalists and editor at large of The 19th, told me.

In the past year, NBC News has shut down all of its verticals dedicated to reporting on Black, Latino, queer, and other underrepresented groups. CBS eliminated its Race and Culture team. Bloomberg and Politico wound down their newsletters about race, according to Nieman Lab. In February, the Washington Post laid off 45 percent of unionized Black staffers amid widespread reductions, but journalists at the Post told my colleague Riddhi Setty that leadership had given up on diverse coverage long before that.

These are a few suggestive examples—but what we know about the bigger picture of representation in journalism is largely anecdotal. There is no comprehensive or current data on reductions of race coverage or diverse staffing across the industry. In 2025, the American Press Institute (API) announced that it had “acquired the survey” from the NLA so that it could relaunch and expand that research. Robyn Tomlin, the executive director of API, told me in an email that they “are working to identify potential funding to support it in the future.” For now, only historical survey data is available on the institute’s website.

“We’re absolutely in a moment now where Black journalists are being disproportionately affected by choices around whose beats get cut and what kind of teams get dismantled,” Haines said. “And frankly, whose expertise is valued versus whose expertise is considered expendable and whose communities and what kind of audiences are just optional.”

It is particularly troubling to see newsrooms cowed by the administration’s cynical efforts to reframe DEI as discrimination, because these are the institutions on which we rely to tell that story. “The press, tasked with protecting American democracy, is best secured by reflecting the American people,” Jelani Cobb, the dean of Columbia Journalism School and this magazine’s publisher, wrote for CJR in 2018. Six years later, many news organizations are still failing to tell the full American story. “You can’t say democracy is under threat and then just eliminate the journalists that are best positioned to explain how that threat is landing in Black communities,” Haines said. “If we get pushed out, America literally knows less about itself at the very moment that it needs to know the truth about itself.”

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois introduced the concept of “second sight” and the ability it gives Black Americans to see the country as it truly is rather than the ideal it is often claimed to be. In A Second Sight: How the Wonder and Vision of Black Mediamakers Push America Toward Freedom, Sarah J. Jackson, an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, explores how that double consciousness is both a burden and a privilege for Black storytellers, giving them “a profound insight: the ability to see through the veil, to understand the contradictions of American life with a clarity often unavailable to those at the center of power. Second sight is a vision, a tool, a gift.”

The book, out this week, is an alternative history of media in America, an insightful and invaluable examination of how Black journalists, photographers, filmmakers, radio hosts, and podcasters have shaped the nation, even while their contributions have too often been excluded from the official record. Jackson combines deep historical analysis with interviews of contemporary Black media-makers conducted over four years to trace the stories of those “who have used the tools of their time—pen, press, lens, mic—to critique the nation and imagine it otherwise.”

By structuring the book around the founding principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Jackson shows how figures such as Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Mary McLeod Bethune fundamentally reframed our understanding of these concepts. She draws a direct line between their work and journalists of today who continue to interrogate the idea of the American project—including Cobb and Haines, as well as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Gene Demby, Gabriella Angotti-Jones, and Chenjerai Kumanyika. These journalists, Jackson writes, continue to give us “a more nuanced, evocative, and honest story about our nation. Their belief that the public can hold—and act on—this story is itself an extraordinary act of faith.”

In the book’s coda, Jackson reminds us that, as the country prepares to mark the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, “one measure of the integrity” of the flood of expected media coverage will be how it treats the stories of Americans on the margins. “Are the stories and contributions to democracy of countless unnamed Americans—whose lives and futures are tied to these histories—considered worthy of remembrance and celebration?” Jackson asks. “Whose freedom is celebrated? Whose life and liberty? Whose happiness protected? What futures imagined?”

One morning in the fall of 2022, Juliana Pache was solving the New York Times’ “Mini” crossword, as she did every day, when she came across something that stumped her. “I don’t remember the clues from that day, but there was something about one of the clues in particular from that Mini that I was like, ‘This feels like a white person would know this and I probably wouldn’t,’” Pache recalled.

The experience prompted Pache, a first-generation Afro-Caribbean American, to look for puzzles centered on Black history and culture. When she couldn’t find what she was looking for, she decided to make it herself. “That day, I bought a bunch of domain names, because I wasn’t sure what to name it yet. And I had never made a crossword puzzle before. I was like, ‘How hard could it be?’” She laughed. “It turns out it’s way harder than it looks.”

Pache taught herself how to construct puzzles by watching YouTube videos and found support on a Discord channel. Three months later, she debuted Black Crossword with her first mini. She has published a new puzzle every day since. The site’s tagline: “If you know, you know.” Clues this week included “‘There’s Always This ___: On Basketball and Ascension’ (2024 book by Hanif Abdurraqib),” “Radical Puerto Rican civil rights organization, The Young ___,” and “Dancer and choreographer ___ Ninja.” (The answers: Year, Lords, Willi.)

For Pache, it’s important that Black Crossword not present Black culture as a monolith. “A really big part of my goal is to connect people across the diaspora culturally,” she told me. “Language is such a huge part of how black folks across the diaspora communicate with each other. We have these kinds of shared languages.”

She has also published two puzzle books: Black Crossword: 100 Mini Puzzles Celebrating the African Diaspora in 2024 and Black Crossword: 100 Midi Puzzles Connecting the African Diaspora last year. She is currently brainstorming for her third book, which will include a wider variety of puzzles, including word searches and logic games. “There are so many ways to challenge hatred and systemic erasure,” she told me. With Black Crossword, she has found a way to do that by centering Black culture. “My primary feeling,” she said, “was this would be a joy to have.”

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

In 2025, Press Freedom Came Under Direct Attack

BY AIDA ALAMI

We must not respond to this existential crisis with silence and apathy.

In 2025, CJR extensively covered alarming assaults on free speech and press freedom in the United States and across the world. I am referring to the killing fields of Gaza, but not only that. I am also thinking of the banning of the Associated Press from the White House’s press briefing room in February, and the absurd new rules imposed on the Pentagon press corps in October, as well as physical attacks by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on journalists, and the deportations of at least two media figures, Mario Guevara and Sami Hamdi. Billionaires are fighting for control of media companies, and many media workers of color are being pushed out of their jobs. In short, this year has felt like an endless horror film.

I started 2025 by reading Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This—a book that hit me strongly because it spoke more eloquently than I could have ever imagined about the fraught relationship between Western institutions and someone like me: a Moroccan, Muslim journalist closely following the devastation of Gaza. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly two hundred and fifty journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. (Other sources put the count higher.) These journalists also faced acute starvation; in a CJR story about the famine from July, Meghnad Bose quotes a journalist saying, “I used to chase the truth. Now I chase calories.” In so many instances, reporters in Gaza were targeted precisely because they wore their press vests.

The second chapter of El Akkad’s book is called “Witness.” It discusses “utterly meaningless” words on the killing of journalists by Antony Blinken, the former secretary of state. El Akkad writes, “The journalists who bring the reality of the world to light are daily slaughtered. Meanwhile an embarrassing number of their Western colleagues, who for the most part fear no such outcome but accept it as the sad lot of those distant others, travel within the protective cocoon of people like the very concerned secretary and measure his vacuous declarations of solidarity with their craft as just another part of the horse race, just another part of the game.”

In March, months before he won the National Book Award, I interviewed El Akkad for CJR. He told me that accolades no longer meant much to him, because “I’ve seen them not be applied when the moment called for it most vehemently.” In other words, being compensated and rewarded for urgent, rights-defending work by the very institutions that have failed to express the same urgency or values rang hollow to him. This sentiment was something I would spend the rest of the year thinking about.

In August, CJR asked an essential question: What can the media do collectively to stop Gaza from being the deadliest place for journalists in the world? We collected almost two dozen responses from journalists, academics, and advocates to think through solutions. My colleague Azmat Khan wrote about the “muted responses” of journalism organizations to the killings of journalists by Israel: “A growing number have come to view this, ultimately, as a failure to contend with man-made human catastrophe in Gaza, including for reporters—and it has marked a breaking point in their relationships with legacy news institutions.” Atossa Araxia Abrahamian also put it well when she wrote, earlier this month, “Over the past two years, Gaza has shown governments around the world just how much they can get away with when it comes to silencing the press.”

To me, the way the media industry has responded to the horrors happening in Gaza has not come as a surprise. My own past experiences with extractive journalistic relationships, where my local knowledge was indispensable to news companies while my labor was erased by several peers, made the dehumanization I’ve witnessed these past two years feel inevitable rather than anomalous.

A crisis abroad can only weaken journalism at home. What we tolerate elsewhere eventually hurts us—and the pressure from outside the industry is real. The second Trump presidency has been marked by daily assaults on the press. I mean not only viral sound bites, but also real restrictions. In April, I profiled Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, and spoke to reporters who called the atmosphere in the briefing room “surreal.” CJR’s Ivan L. Nagy wrote a suite of stories about new policies implemented by the Pentagon that exchanged accreditation for agreements from reporters to have their material vetted. As a result, the Pentagon press is now staffed with MAGA sycophants.

The Trump presidency will also be defined by the deportations of Guevara and Hamdi and by ICE’s violence against US journalists. On CJR’s podcast, The Kicker, Josh Hersh talked with journalists from Chicago’s Block Club, which joined several of that city’s news outlets in a lawsuit against the Trump administration and other top officials, filed in US District Court, alleging that federal agents had used “extreme brutality” against the press and others at protests. “We have seen clashes and we have seen federal agents, initially just ICE—then Border Patrol, led by Gregory Bovino—using chemical weapons on protesters and journalists,” Francia García Hernández, a reporter for Block Club, said. Stephanie Lulay, Block Club’s co–executive editor and cofounder, told Hersh, “Four of our journalists have been shot with pepper spray bullets and tear-gassed while covering protests.” Just last week, my colleague Jem Bartholomew covered a new report from the Freedom of the Press Foundation that documented at least thirty-two arrests and a hundred and seventy assaults on journalists so far in 2025.

Through all of this, journalism survived—as reporters continued to do their work in spite of attacks on their dignity and safety. In so many instances it continues to thrive. I have never been more in awe of the people who are delivering timely and essential reporting around the world—such as the more than twenty journalists who were arrested in October for trying to reach Gaza. But at the same time, I fear that press freedom is slowly and quietly eroding while institutional silence and apathy do nothing to protect it. Freedom is never lost at once.

Other Notable Stories…

By Jem Bartholomew

Three hours before broadcast, CBS News abruptly pulled a Sunday-night report on CECOT, the Salvadoran megaprison where the Trump administration deported more than two hundred and fifty Venezuelan migrants earlier this year, sparking a backlash from one of its high-profile correspondents. According to Semafor, Bari Weiss, the editor in chief recently installed by David Ellison—I wrote about Weiss for CJR in October—had “serious concerns about the piece,” with the network holding the segment “pending comment or an interview with White House officials next year.” In an email to colleagues last night seen by the Wall Street Journal, reporter Sharyn Alfonsi said that Weiss “spiked our story,” which she said “was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices.” Alfonsi said the decision was political, not editorial. (For more on the ordeals of 60 Minutes, read this reported feature from the fall by Adam Piore.)

The Justice Department released thousands of files relating to investigations into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday afternoon. (The timing was notable, as Jim Derogatis and Seth Stern write for CJR, as it follows the R. Kelly secrecy playbook.) The DOJ said it will keep releasing documents in the coming weeks, with hundreds of thousands of files reportedly still being reviewed. That defies the instructions of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed on November 19, for all files to be released within thirty days. In the meantime, news organizations set about sifting through Friday’s cache, but the files were heavily redacted and contained few revelations. (The release appeared to shield Donald Trump while focusing the spotlight on Bill Clinton; a Clinton spokesperson said he was being used as a “scapegoat.”) Trump’s reluctance to unearth the Epstein files has led to a fracturing of his MAGA base, with, as Emily Bell wrote for CJR earlier this year, the president “now confronting the outcome of a media ecosystem he invented, one based on panicky, consensus-squashing conspiracy theories.”

On Wednesday, Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, appeared before an oversight hearing by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The testimony made headlines for Carr’s comment that the FCC “is not an independent agency, formally speaking”—a statement that alarmed many observers as another instance of power flowing toward the executive branch under Donald Trump. (In the minutes after Carr’s comments, Axios’s Sara Fischer spotted that the FCC website was updated to scrub “independent” from the agency’s description.) Carr has already faced criticism for wielding the FCC like a political cudgel, pressuring ABC over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and exacting promises from Skydance to remake CBS News in its takeover of Paramount. Texas Republican Ted Cruz, the Senate committee chairman, told Carr on Wednesday: “Democrat or Republican, we cannot have the government arbitrating truth or opinion.” (For more Carr’s allegiance to Trump at the FCC, read our piece by Kyle Paoletta.)

Over the past year, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, has spoken eleven times to Chris Whipple, a Vanity Fair writer, addressing a range of topics with unexpected candor. But when the piece finally went live on December 16—alongside close-up portraits of administration officials—Wiles attacked the write-up. (Among her comments: Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality,” JD Vance is “a conspiracy theorist,” Elon Musk is an “odd duck” and “avowed ketamine” user, and Trump will “keep on blowing boats up until [Venezuelan leader Nicolás] Maduro cries uncle.”) While not denying the veracity of the quotations, Wiles said on X: “Significant context was disregarded” and much material was “left out of the story.” Christopher Anderson, the photographer for the story, said about his blemishes-and-all photo shoot: “It was my attempt to circumnavigate the stage-managed image of politics and cut through the image that the public relations team wants to be presented.”

Paramount Skydance suffered another rebuff last week in its takeover attempt of Warner Bros. Discovery—this time for more than 108 billion dollars—with the board rejecting the offer, in favor of progressing with Netflix’s takeover, in a reported unanimous vote. According to Variety, that was despite Ellison, Paramount’s chairman and chief executive, offering Warner Bros.’ David Zaslav a pay package worth hundreds of millions of dollars. (Ellison reportedly texted Zaslav: “It would be the honor of a lifetime to be your partner and to be the owner of these iconic assets.” Zaslav did not reply.) Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that Soo Kim, the founder of New York hedge fund Standard General, has been approached by at least one major Warner Bros. Discovery shareholder about acquiring CNN.

On Thursday, the UK prime minister’s office announced a shake-up of press briefings. Instead of twice-daily, on-the-record briefings from the prime minister’s spokesperson to political journalists (“the lobby”), the plans call for one briefing a day. This will also sometimes be replaced by a press conference, where content creators and trade journalists may be invited, at which questions must be submitted to officials ahead of time. The government defended the plans as an attempt to broaden scrutiny. But the UK Society of Editors condemned the move, saying it could limit accountability. The Foreign Press Association (FPA) told CJR it’s part of a wider distaste for scrutiny since the Labour government was elected in 2024. “Labour has effectively canceled the foreign lobby,” Deborah Bonetti, the FPA director, said, citing accreditation struggles at recent summits and conferences leading to “a broken relationship.” “Their questionable approach to press scrutiny has now spilled into the UK lobby,” Bonetti said.

And the BBC said it will defend itself against a ten-billion-dollar lawsuit filed by Trump over the editing of a speech he made on January 6, 2021, in a 2024 documentary. As I wrote for CJR last month, “The BBC’s error is regrettable not so much for its content—the program’s larger point that Trump was cheering on an antidemocratic riot still holds true—as for how it was ultimately weaponized to call the broadcaster’s legitimacy into question.” As right-wing foes circled, the director general and head of BBC News were forced to resign. Last Monday, Trump sued in Florida—claiming defamation and violating a trade practices law—ratcheting up his pressure on the press following his lawsuits against the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. But the case itself, legal scholars have said, holds little merit. “Trump must show knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth,” a very high bar, said RonNell Andersen Jones, a University of Utah law professor, in comments to CNN.

RDEAD ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Washington Post’s Turnaround On Its Opinion Pages Is Returning Journalism To Its Partisan Roots − But Without The Principles

BY JOSEPH JONES

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF MEDIA

ETHICS AND LAW AT REED COLLEGE
OF MEDIA, WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY

Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest person and owner of The Washington Post, announced in February 2025 significant changes to the editorial pages of his Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper.

The editorial section, also called the opinion section, is where editors and contributors with a deep and broad understanding of the latest news offer their analysis of the day’s issues. This content is distinct from the fact-based news reporting of the outlet’s everyday journalists.

Both kinds of content serve the public interest. Journalists report news to inform the public, while editors and opinion writers analyze and explain news, putting facts into a larger context to aid understanding.

At the Post, instead of news editors making independent decisions on what to write and the perspectives they should take, Bezos tweeted, “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

Opinion and analysis in the Post was thus going to limit itself to one particular viewpoint.

As a journalism historian, I analyze how journalism has changed over time. Over the years, the purpose, practices and forms of journalism have evolved.

Bezos’ decision harks back to an earlier time when editors and owners were the same person, and newspapers offered a specific interpretation of the world, not just a neutral report.

Informed opinions and analysis

While editorial writers and opinion columnists offer their opinions, these views are still expected to be grounded in journalistic principles, building from verifiable facts and comprehensively considering context to offer well-reasoned analysis.

Many of today’s news editors and journalists stake their professional reputations on their obligation to truth, independent of special interests or particular ideologies. They pride themselves on reporting and explaining the news without fear or favor.

After Bezos’ announcement, editorial page editor and veteran journalist David Shipley resigned from his position. Shipley told his staff he was stepping down “after reflection on how I can best move forward in the profession that I love.”

Journalists and media critics from across the political spectrum read Bezos’ editorial policy change as going against the tradition of a paper that long prided itself on editorial independence in the name of public service. Historically, the newspaper’s opinion section offered a range of views on a variety of issues.

Limiting the newspaper’s opinion section to a single viewpoint, critics argue, doesn’t seem to align with the Post’s slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” as it stifles public discussion and purposefully turns off some of the lights.

Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron told the Guardian, “If you’re trying to advance the cause of democracy, then you allow for public debate, which is what democracy is all about.”

Putting all of this in historical context can help illuminate Bezos’ decision as well as the current state of American media.

Opinionated early American journalism

At the nation’s founding, the very first newspapers were highly partisan, supporting and receiving much of their funding from particular political parties and government subsidies. Newspapers were small operations where editors, owners, writers and typesetters were usually all the same person.

As the country and its political direction were just forming, these editor-owners felt a public obligation and duty to stake out a clear political position. There were no standards of journalistic neutrality; editor-owners framed news reports, wrote columns and published other people’s opinions based on their own particular viewpoints.

Editors wrote passionately, using language that suggested the fate of the nation was at stake. They were also principled and willing to criticize their own parties if they thought it warranted. And because they were transparent about their views, readers responded by gravitating to their preferred newspapers. Consequently, the number of newspapers in the U.S. increased from 35 in 1783 to 1,200 by 1833. Historians have thus argued that the early United States was a “nation of newspaper readers.”

Unlike modern notions of journalistic impartiality, if a newspaper didn’t support a political party or remained neutral, it was dismissed by readers as either lacking morals or being too stupid to form an opinion.

As newspapers of the early republic developed from reporting recycled news from other sources to guiding public discussion, the editorial thus emerged as a short opinion essay separate from reports on local speeches or foreign news.

Fact-based journalism and informed analysis

For various reasons, the partisan press gave way to a journalism that attempted wider appeal. By 1900, many news outlets aimed for impartiality and neutrality.

By the 1920s, most journalists embraced the ideals of objectivity, the notion that journalists should only report facts.

Interestingly, this led to a growth in editorials, opinion columns and news analysis.

Opinion columns written by journalists provided interpretive frameworks for readers to understand the meaning of news events. One such journalist-commentator was Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), a political analyst who wrote a number of influential columns, including a piece infamously viewed as a catalyst for Japanese internment during World War II.

Such content provided journalists a means to show their independence from the powerful. Journalists could commit themselves to truth and verifiable facts while still asserting their independent role to contextualize news, explain its implications and guide the conversations necessary for democracy.

Research has shown that such opinion-based news content can influence what citizens and media outlets prioritize as important, as well as how policymakers approach certain issues.

Today, especially with the increase in partisan television, radio and internet outlets, there is no shortage of opinion-based news and analysis.

As long as people stay empathetic and open to others with different experiences, this is not inherently bad for democracy. Problems arise, however, when opinionated news outweighs fact-based reporting and people begin to mistrust all reporting they do not agree with, a psychological phenomenon known as confirmation bias.

In today’s digital world, everyone can broadcast or publish their opinion, whereas fact-based reporting takes time and resources. While news analysis and thoughtful opinion can generate important social conversations and help citizens understand news, too much opinion that isn’t grounded in facts can also lead to a general atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion. This spells trouble for the good-faith understanding, open dialogue and mutual trust so vital to democracy.

Profiting from polarization

Polling data suggests Americans are more divided than ever.

Perhaps Washington Post owner Bezos is simply responding to the public’s documented preference for partisanship over truth or to the profitability of partisan news.

But as a matter of context, there is a difference between the principled partisans of the early republic, the professional analysts of the 20th century, and an owner who demands his media outlet’s opinions should be limited to his preferences.

When he purchased The Washington Post in 2013, Bezos said the newspaper would not change and that “the paper’s duty will remain to its reader and not to the private interests of its owners.”

In this latest move, he has signaled that his private interest is a priority, at least for the editorial section. This limits the perspectives the Post-reading public can encounter and restricts the free marketplace of ideas. So when a Post journalist of 40 years wrote a column opposing Bezos’ editorial decision, her bosses refused to publish it.

Apparently, light criticism was not a “personal liberty” afforded a longtime employee. With her beloved employer not even willing to discuss the column – discussion being the cornerstone of deliberative democracy – the veteran journalist resigned.

In the current media environment, organizations and people who don’t participate in news production or share its values can purchase journalistic outlets and alter their standards and practices. As a result, principled journalists may decide to leave rather than compromise their mission of public service.

Ultimately, Bezos is being transparent. It is thus up to the American people to decide on the kind of journalism and pursuit of truth they desire. It’s worth noting that tens of thousands of canceled subscriptions have already begun to make that decision clear.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

A World In Common: The Trailblazing New Wave Of African Photographers

We spoke with six photographers from the continent’s new vanguard of image-making about their visions of Africa past, present and future

BY EMILY DINSDALE

As its title suggests, the scope of A World In Common: Contemporary African Photography is vast. The expansive new exhibition at Tate Modern brings together 36 multigenerational artists whose work explicates, shapes, and reinterprets Africa’s diverse cultures and historical narratives. Tracing these threads across photography, film, and audio, the show spans the continent’s many geographies, cultures and time zones to present a vision of Africa past, present and future that is as nuanced as it is prodigious.

“Given the vast number of countries on the African continent, the aim wasn’t necessarily to ‘represent’ each country, but rather to reveal multiple perspectives on different themes and issues,” explains curator Osei Bonsu. “The title is taken from Achille Mbembe’s collection of essays, On the Postcolony. Mbembe’s notion of ‘a world in common’ is one in which Africa’s histories are understood as part of a global narrative of civilisation. Remapping Africa’s entangled histories of slavery, colonialism and migration, Mbembe argues for the rethinking of African experience in relation to global networks and cosmopolitan identities.”

The exhibition also examines the currency of the photographic image as a supposed document of truth and how, as a conduit of meaning, its meaning can alter as it travels through space and with the passage of time. “Photography has played a very important role in shaping global perceptions of Africa – the medium has been in use on the continent since its invention in the 19th century,” Bonsu tells Dazed. “While photography is widely understood as a democratic and accessible medium, it has also been used as a tool to perpetuate colonial images and stereotypes of Africa. The exhibition confronts this narrative, looking at Africa’s multiple histories and cultures to illuminate the role photography can play in changing the way we see the world.”

Bonsu concludes, “A World in Common is an exhibition dedicated to expanding the way we see photography. We hope that people see the exhibition as an opportunity to learn more about the many cultural, social, and historical narratives that shape African experiences. The exhibition addresses themes such as climate change, spirituality, and urbanism from the perspective of artists who are exploring Africa’s past, present and future. We hope that visitors will feel inspired to reimagine the role photography can play in reshaping our understanding of important global and local issues.”

Below, we speak to six of the younger artists whose work is featured in A World in Common. From reimagined family archives, future utopias, and visions of the natural world infused with mystery, we talked with Lebohang Kganye, Atong Atem, Ruth Ossai, Mário Macilau, Léonard Pongo and Julianknxx about how they make their work and how it contributes to this hugely important exhibition.

LEBOHANG KGANYE

Working primarily with themes of loss, death, family history and ancestry, Johannesburg-based artist Lebohang Kganye draws on family archives, family history and oral traditions in order to explore ideas of home and belonging, refuge and identity, while also excavating the history of South Africa and apartheid.

“Ke Lefa Laka: Her Story is a body of work that began two years after the passing of my mother. I was scared that I was beginning to forget what my mother looked like, what she sounded like, and her defining gestures. So I began to look for pieces of my mother in the house, this is when I found her old photo albums and I realised that some of the clothes that she was wearing in her 20s and 30s were still in her wardrobe. With the help of my grandmother, I was able to retrace the exact locations. I proceeded to re-enact her photos, mimicking the same poses she had. My reconnection with her became a visual manipulation of ‘her-our’ histories.

“I later developed digital photomontages where I juxtaposed my mother’s old photographs with photographs of a ‘present version of her’ to reconstruct a new story and a commonality: she is me, I am her and there remains in this commonality so much difference, and so much distance in space and time. The photomontages became a substitute for the paucity of memory, a forged identification and imagined conversation.”

“The idea of the imagination and staging within family photographs is really intriguing to me. Photographs are a combination of truth, of fantasy, and of choice. What family photographs depict versus what the family actually is or was are two separate realities. For example, my mother worked in a factory in her twenties, yet among her photos there is not a single one of her in her factory worker’s uniform. The photographs that come to represent her are all very staged, very beautiful.

“My work addresses the act of erasure in family albums as an organic process. The selective realities offered to us by family albums are no different from oral traditions. I am told a story today, yet when I am told the same story tomorrow, even if I am asking a factual question, the answer will be different, and that is organic. While my work may resonate with a particularly South African experience, it critically engages the wider narratives of collective memory through oral traditions, and memory as a tangible source material” – Lebohang Kganye

ATONG ATEM

Multidisciplinary artist Atong Atem examines notions relating to “disparate ideas around science fiction, mythology, history, identity and displacement”. Originally from South Sudan but now based in Melbourne, Atem explores the fluidity of migrant narratives and postcolonial practices in the African diaspora.

“I use photography, film, text and painting to make work about legacy, permanence, metaphysics and self-actualisation. Many of the photographic works I’ve made have been about photography as a tool – the non-photographic works I’ve made have also been influenced by my interest in photographic history and especially the aesthetics of portrait photography.

“I grew up with a very particular relationship to photography – especially portraiture. It was a symbol of permanence in an otherwise fractured and displaced life. My family, and many others like it, have carried photographs of people and places through war zones, language barriers and unimaginable difficulties so they become imbued with an almost spiritual reverence and a power beyond their physicality. The photo album is more like a shrine than an object for many of us.

“The Studio Series was my first photographic series of work… They were made in response to my understanding of the written history of ethnographic photography and my emotional response to its visual language. [The title] references the great studio photographers of West Africa as well as the unknown photographers my family visited across East Africa, and of course, this work is about identity and how we form it, but I’m really looking at mythology and how we create myths informed by aesthetics rather than the other way round. I participate in this, and I think there’s an interesting power in it.

“Aesthetically, I’m very interested in things that are kitsch or naff; there’s a joy and humour in that for me... I also reference a lot of the visual things I’m inspired by to compose my images. The most obvious - to me at least - is catholic iconography. Almost all of my portraits reference Images of saints and Catholic figures in the posing, expressions and image composition. The way I like to pose my hands is strongly influenced by representations of the Virgin Mary. It’s not an explicit commentary on the nature of religion, but an appreciation for the aesthetics of Catholicism and the symbols of divinity. There’s something more spiritual beneath it all but it’s not the point for me” – Atong Atem

RUTH OSSAI

Employing the medium of studio portraiture, photographer Ruth Ossai documents the “everyday life of families and friends with their own personal style” while drawing on a personal archive of old family photos from Nigeria and Yorkshire.

“[My work is inspired by] family – ‘family’ said loosely, as this could be friends, colleagues, teachers, sports team, lovers, etcetera – and community at large. My sets are made in south-east Nigeria and are inspired by special effects featured in Igbo gospel music videos and Nollywood films. [I’m drawn to] the innocence, naturalness, effortlessness and freeness of one’s self.

“It’s incredible to see how photography has transitioned through time and to see my works alongside studio photographers like James Barnor… who paved the way and were crucial key innovators of photography in the 20th century” – Ruth Ossai

MÁRIO MACILAU

Self-taught Mozambican visual artist and activist Mário Macilau uses his work to highlight the over-consumption of poorly manufactured electronic goods at the detriment of the environment.

“My approach is focused on the research and discovery based on the consequence of changes with the passage of time, people, environment within the living and the working condition. I like mostly to also work on subjects related to collective memory and the process of decolonising forms. My photographs highlight identity, political issues and environmental conditions, at times working with socially isolated groups to make my audience aware not only of the many social injustices and inequalities in the world, but also of scenes of humanity, brotherhood, victory, love and hope.

“The Mozambican economy has grown steadily in the last few years, and this growth continues unabated to this day. It can namely be observed in the new electronics consumption trends emerging in Mozambican communities. Every day, people buy new or used electronic devices imported from industrialized countries. Generally poor in quality, the purchased commodities don’t last very long: it is as if they had been designed to break. Customers are accordingly forced to discard just-bought equipment and to seek upgrades on a regular basis.

“And yet, even as these new television sets, mobile phones, radio receivers, digital cameras, computers and other consumer electronic devices are thrown out every day, there is no systemic plan to process and eliminate them once they have been discarded. There is no electronic waste management or recycling system in place. E-waste is now a major component of the material waste in the city and it is growing at an alarming rate. It is estimated that every year several million tonnes of e-waste are generated around the country, an amount that equals to roughly seven kilograms of waste for every person on the planet” – Mário Macilau

LÉONARD PONGO

Léonard Pongo is a visual artist working with mixed media, whose work includes film, photography, textile works and immersive installations exploring Pngo’s relationship with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Drawing on themes of creation, destruction, beauty and natural power, the artist connects these ideas with “a sense of depth and awe, a sort of respect and dignity for the land, natural hierarchy and profoundness of nature.”

“I’m very interested in the idea that our perceptions are limited, fragmented, and that reality is much bigger than our understanding. I try to create images that carry a sense of mystery where the viewers can feel they access a different realm, where their usual gaze can shift a little and where the universe that is created also plays with their sense of perception and where their representations and preconceptions are challenged.

“My inspiration comes from a direct experience of living in the land, and a performative element, where physically roaming the country’s more remote areas for several weeks allows me to create the images. I also spend time researching, discussing and reading about the country’s traditions, and looking at traditional crafts, which all combine to guide me in the creation process. I like to work with a rather intuitive approach, letting others guide me and following cues and inspiration as they come up while walking.

“Primordial Earth is inspired by Congolese traditions and organised as a dialogue with the landscape of the country, where the land itself is seen as a protagonist with its own will, and a living entity, with its own knowledge and wisdom. My belief is that from this interaction and dialogue with the landscape, which happens visually and physically, deeper understanding of ourselves and our place on the planet can be attained.

“The project is consciously organised to revolve more around shapes, visual environments, and physical sensations rather than themes or clear narrative elements. I prefer focusing on a sensory experience of the spaces I interact with rather than a mental analysis. My hope is that focusing on this type of experience allows an audience to create a personal relation to the work, and through it, to the Congolese land(scape)” – Léonard Pongo

JULIANKNXX

Julianknxx is a writer, visual artist and filmmaker whose practice negotiates “the space between cinema, poetry and music”. Their work focuses on narratives that tell global stories through the lens of Africa. He tells Dazed, “I like the idea of being a satisfied wanderer moving through the world and uncovering our histories.”

“In Praise of Still Boys is a multi-channel three-screen installation that re-examines my childhood growing up in Sierra Leone through the lives and experiences of these young boys that live near the Atlantic Ocean in Freetown. The film meditates on change, fate, and everyday magic, whilst thinking about what the land can tell you about itself and its people.

“Storytelling is really important to my practice, what stories are coming through Sierra Leone, and how these stories continue to engage in global historical discourse. Specifically, I’m interested in oral storytelling and learning through the stories told by our elders. I’m also questioning what meaning land holds, especially West African land, in regard to world history.

“Sierra Leone overlooks the Atlantic, which holds so much meaning and history. The ocean and water play a big part in this work, focusing on what significance the ocean had during, and after the transatlantic slave trade. I consider the healing qualities of water in this piece, the way we meditate with water, we live in it, it lives in us. I’m also inspired by mythologies of Black people having lived and survived in the ocean.

“In West Africa, blue is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolises trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth and heaven. In all, blue represents love, harmony, togetherness and peace. The colour blue evokes the natural harbour of Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone. It is the perpetual colour of the clear daytime sky across the continent. It is also the colour of the Atlantic waters where thousands of slaves were drowned, left and transported. It is the colour of the crops that enslaved ancestors cultivated. It is also significant as the film is shot during ‘the blue hour’, which not only has an aesthetic effect but is also of significance in Sierra Leonean folklore” – Julianknxx

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Photo Series Explores The Beauty Of First-Generation Immigrants

BY LUCY PURDY

LONDON (POSITIVE NEWS) -- Photographer Elizabeth Okoh, who was raised in Nigeria, wanted to explore the experiences of others in the African diaspora

A five-part conceptual photographic series, African Diasporan, by Elizabeth Okoh, includes portraits of people who were brought up in Africa but who now live in London. Okoh took up photography seriously in 2017, after doing it as a hobby since her teenage years. Her models are originally from countries including Sierra Leone, Nigeria and the Gambia. Okoh did all the shoots in one day, including styling, planning and set design.

“I’m mostly inspired by my culture, immigration and living in the diaspora,” she said. “I’m interested in how other Africans experience living in the UK having been raised elsewhere, and in figuring out if there are any shared experiences.”

Okoh noted that the way she was raised in Nigeria is “very different” to how her mother is raising her younger sister here in the UK, a topic that influenced the ‘Legacy’ part of the collection.

“More African women are becoming more empowered and speaking up for what they want, so I was interested in how this influences heterosexual relationships in a culture where the man is seen as dominant with no room for negotiation,” she said of the ‘Union’ collection. ‘Duality’ explores how African men are multifaceted: “The idea of being strong but also vulnerable and attuned to their emotions.”

“In ‘Bonds’, I explore the bond between sisters and friends. My models wear very similar dresses, as it’s very common for siblings to wear dresses from the same fabric for special occasions, and in friendships, similar outfits are worn for celebrations such as weddings. The idea was to explore how this type of relationship blossoms or stagnates in a different culture with different sets of norms.”

Finally, in the ‘Womanhood’ collection, Okoh explores what it is to be female and African. “How do African women retain their culture and still exercise the agency to drive their own choices which may very much deviate from traditional ideas?”

So, what did she learn? “That, although we come from different backgrounds, most of our experiences in the diaspora are relatable. I learned that we’re all simply finding ways to become better versions of ourselves, while finding where we fit in this ‘new world’.”

ARMY AFRICA: Sergeant Morales Club...

BY PAOLO BOVO

U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Eva Miranda, assigned to U.S. Army Africa, receives the Sgt. Morales Club medallion and certificate from Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier, the U.S. Army Africa commander, during a ceremony at Caserma Ederle, Vicenza, Italy Jan. 28, 2019. The Sergeant Morales Club is an exclusive club that only inducts the most elite noncommissioned officers and whose members demonstrate the highest level of dedication to serving the Army and its Soldiers. (U.S. Army photo by Paolo Bovo)

AP PHOTOS: Growing Up Female, Across The Globe

In this Sept. 29, 2015, file photo, Luana poses for photos on her roller skates at her home in Merlo, Argentina. Luana says that when one of the girls asked her why she had a penis, a friend jumped in. "She's transsexual," the child explained, nonchalantly. That level of comfort is no doubt in part because Luana herself appears so at ease. In 2013, she became the youngest person to take advantage of a progressive Argentine law that allows people to identify their own gender for legal purposes. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File

Baby Seibureh, 17, and Claude Seibureh, 48, of Freetown, were married during the Ebola crisis. Because of her small stature, Baby needed a cesarean section to safely give birth to their son, Joseph. (Stephanie Sinclair/Too Young to Wed via AP

Ranjeda, 9, Rumana, 10, Minajan, 10 and Wisma Bi Bi, 12, smile at each other while waiting in their classroom in Chakmarkul refugee camp, Bangladesh. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E

In this Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2012 file photo, a young girl in her colorful dress reaches out to greet a Pakistani policeman securing the road outside Kainat Riaz's home in Mingora, Swat Valley, Pakistan. ( AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File

Hagar Yahia holds her daughter Awsaf, a thin 5-year-old who is getting no more than 800 calories a day from bread and tea, half the normal amount for a girl her age, in Abyan, Yemen. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty

In this Feb. 15, 2018, file photo, ttudents gather to grieve during a vigil at Pine Trails Park for the victims of a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla..(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File

In this Nov. 12, 2013, file photo, a young girl who is a member of the RAF cadets walks between gravestones at Tyne Cot World War One cemetery in Zonnebeke, Belgium. Tyne Cot is now the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world in terms of burials. There are 11,956 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in the cemetery, 8,369 of those burials are unidentified. Other special memorials commemorate 20 casualties whose graves were destroyed by shell fire and there are 4 German burials, 3 being unidentified. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

In this Nov. 8, 2012, file photo, girls turning 15 pose in their gowns for photos inside a pink limousine before their debutante ball, organized by the Peacemaker Police Unit program in the Mangueira favela, or shantytown, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The debutante ball marks girls' transition from childhood to adulthood and is common in Brazil and other Latin American countries. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo, File)

Students protest gun violence in the biggest demonstration yet of the student activism that has emerged in response to last month's massacre of 17 people at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

In this Sunday, Nov. 19, 2017, file photo, Rohingya Muslim girls carry water pots in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)

In this June 24, 2015, file photo, schoolgirls walk through the rocky yard of Bethesda Evangelical School during a break in class, in Canaan, Haiti. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

In this Nov. 14, 2016, file photo, Nurya Temam, center front, a 10th grade student at Northwest School, cheers with other students who walked out of classes in Seattle as they protest the election of Donald Trump as president. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

CAIRO (AP) — As the world marks the International Day of the Girl Child, women’s rights activists point to progress on a wide array of issues but say more needs to be done to protect girls from child marriage, sexual assault and other forms of exploitation.

Experts say girls in their first decade are better positioned for success than their mothers and grandmothers were, thanks to advances in health care and nutrition, and wider access to education. But they say more must be done to keep adolescent and teenage girls in school, and to protect them from violence, unintended pregnancies and forced marriage, which remains common in much of the developing world.

“Poverty, violence, and cultural traditions oppress millions of girls in every part of the world,” said Stephanie Sinclair, a visual journalist who founded “Too Young To Wed,” which campaigns to protect girls’ rights and end child marriage, while offering services to survivors. “It is still a global struggle to have girls valued for more than their bodies — for just their sexuality, fertility and labor.”

The U.N. children’s agency says 12 million girls under the age of 18 will marry this year, and 21 million between the aged of 15 and 19 will get pregnant.

“Every girl should have the right to decide for herself, if, when and whom to marry,” Sinclair said. “To be allowed to be children and teens, with access to gender specific health care and all levels of education; and free to determine the course of their own lives.”

The decision to award this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Nadia Murad, 25, who was among thousands of women and girls kidnapped and enslaved by the Islamic State group in 2014, highlighted a particularly vicious form of sexual assault.

But the #MeToo campaign has shown that less violent forms of sexual abuse and misconduct are all too common, affecting women at all income levels and across multiple industries. Even in wealthy countries, women face persistent pay gaps and other forms of discrimination.

Here is a selection of pictures showing the daily lives of girls across the globe, all taken by female Associated Press photojournalists.

How you can help:

Donate to Too Young to Wed here: http://tooyoungtowed.org/

Follow all of the photographers featured in this gallery: https://twitter.com/APMiddleEast/lists/women-of-ap-photography

Follow Maya Alleruzzo on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mayaalleruzzo

And on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mayaalleruzzo/

NIGERIA: Former Junta Muhammadu Buhari At OPEC Summit, 1977

Former Military Junta, Then Lt. Colonel Muhammadu Buhari With Sheikh Ahmed Yamani Of Saudi Arabia (Center), And King Carl Gustaf Of Sweden (Right), At The OPEC Summit In Stockholm, July 13, 1977. Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images

Trump, Buhari Meet In The White House

ASSOCIATED PRESS IMAGES

President Donald Trump, right, speaks during a news conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, left, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 30, 2018. Image: AP

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with President Muhammadu Buhari in the Rose Garden of the White House, Monday, April 30, 2018, in Washington. Image: AP

President Donald Trump, right, and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, left, shake hands during a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 30, 2018. Image: AP

President Donald Trump, left, welcomes Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, right, to the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 30, 2018. Image: AP

President Donald Trump and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari walk to meet the press in the White House. Image: Jim Loscalzo/EPA

Trump and Buhari faces the press.

Recap: Anthony Bourdain's 'Parts Unknown' Visits Lagos, Nigeria

BY BRIDGET HALLINAN

CONDE NAST, OCTOBER 16, 2017

Bourdain sits down for a traditional Hausa lunch in Lagos. (CNN)

Bourdain has his mind blown by the biggest city in Nigeria.

Every Sunday, we live vicariously through Anthony Bourdain's globe-hopping, face-stuffing adventures on CNN showParts Unknown. This week, he takes us to Lagos, Nigeria, a complex city filled with hustling entrepreneurs and a budding IT industry: a place where you "buy, sell, trade, hustle and claw," says Bourdain. "Make your own way, any way you can."

Where in the world is Anthony Bourdain?

Lagos, the biggest city in Nigeria, and it's a madcap open market: Street shops have unregulated pricing and haggling, supervised by "Area Boys" who collect taxes (one way or another). This climate, locals tell Bourdain, allows anyone the opportunity to build from scratch. The wealthiest moguls inhabit Victoria Island, the "Manhattan" of Lagos, filled with vibrant nightclubs and partygoers. Everyone has about "five or six different side hustles"—Banky Wellington, whom Bourdain met for drinks at Rue 80, is a record label owner, actor/director, artist, advertiser, and chef-in-training. Between flashes of club footage and the marketplaces, Wellington and club owner Shina Peller explain the "do it yourself!" culture that fuels Lagos.

Victoria Island, or "the garden of dreams," as locals call it, is in stark contrast to nearby Makoko. Per the show, nearly 100,000 people live in the floating village, propped up by stilts and unfailing optimism. Makoko is self-sufficient and self-policing: There's electricity, hotels, schools, and restaurants fully independent of the mainland. As Bourdain gets ferried through the waterways, we see children playing soccer in an elevated schoolyard, and women haggling for groceries at one of the markets. Eviction threats constantly loom, but the people fight back with a famous Lagos spirit, constantly emphasized throughout the episode. And with mainland computer science companies like Andela working hard to create more jobs, there may be more opportunity in the city's future.

More importantly: What did he eat?

Unsurprisingly, a little bit of everything, from traditional Hausa tribe dishes like masa griddlecakes to brews with Femi, Seun, and Yeni Kuti, the children of famous singer Fela Kuti. In Makoko, Bourdain sampled a home-cooked meal while he talked with activist Edoato Agbeniyi and Yomi Messou, son a neighborhood leader. On the mainland, he felt the burn while he feasted on pepper soup with journalist Kadaria Ahmed—"It burns. It burns real good." Other Nigerian eats included pounded yams (Nigeria's signature starch), Jollof rice, and Egusi soup, stewed with goat meat, melon seeds, fish stock, and chilis. As food blogger Iquo Ukoh noted, an increasing amount of Nigerians are entering the workforce, so fewer have time for the labor-intensive traditional recipes. But thanks to blogs, classic dishes like Jollof rice live on for people all over the world to enjoy.

Quote of the Week

Bourdain sums up his time in Lagos: “It’s mad, it’s bad, it’s delicious, it’s confusing, and I’ve never seen anything like it.” This is coming from the guy who once ate a still-beating cobra heart.

WTF Moment of the Week
While dining with some food bloggers, Bourdain gets called out for pouring his beer without tipping his glass(we too were scandalized). To which he cheekily replied, "I'm lazy," and joked that one of the bloggers would write that he was an "animal at the table."

Patina Miller At Premier Of 'The Hunger Games: Mockinjay 1'

Patina Miller attends the Premiere of Lionsgate's 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1' at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on November 17, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. Image: Jason Merritt/Getty

"Heat" By Andy Warhol

Set of "Heat": Sylvia Miles and Joe Dallesandro by Andy Warhol Date: ca 1972. Image: The Andy Warhol Foundation.

"Je T'Aime, Moi Non Plus" By Georges Pierre

Set of "Je T'Aime, Moi Non Plus"
British actress and singer Jane Birkin and her partner, French director, singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg on the set of Gainsbourg's film "Je T'Aime, Moi Non Plus" (I Love You, I Don't). Date: October 01, 1975. Location: France. Image: Georges Pierre/Sygma.