Diane Arbus, the photographer who made her name taking pictures of ordinary people with extraordinary characteristics, is the subject of an exhibit which opened this week at the Met Breuer. More on Arbus from WNYC's Sara Fishko in this episode of Fishko Files.

The exhibit, "Diane Arbus: In the Beginning," is at the Met Breuer through November 27, 2016.

Music:

"Main Title" - BLOW-UP (1966)

"The Fur" - FUR (2006)

"Interplay" (1962) - Bill Evans

Bill Evans, piano; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Jim Hall, guitar; Percy Heath, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums

WNYC Production Credits

Executive Producer: Sara Fishko
Mix Engineer: William Moss
Managing Editor, WNYC News: Karen Frillmann
Web: Olivia Briley
Guest Speaker: Vicki Goldberg

Photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon discusses his first career retrospective in 25 years, “Message to the Future,” which is running until September 27 at the Whitney Museum (99 Gansevoort Street). The exhibition features 175 photographs and films that highlight Lyon’s exploration of marginalized people in society, and the political and social issues that affect their lives.

Event: Danny Lyon will be in conversation with U.S. Congressman John Lewis on Friday, July 15 at 7:00 pm at the Whitney Museum of American Art (99 Gansevoort Street).

Danny Lyon, “Mark Di Suvero and Danny Lyon, Hyde Park, Chicago,” 1965. Vintage gelatin silver print. 8 × 10 in. Collection of the artist.

(© Danny Lyon, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York)

Danny Lyon, “Leslie, Downtown Knoxville,” 1967. Vintage gelatin silver print. 28.7 × 19.1 cm (11 1/4 × 7 1/2 in.). Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mr. Danny Lyon

(© Danny Lyon, courtesy Edwynn Houk)

Danny Lyon, “Arrest of Taylor Washington, Atlanta”, 1963. Vintage gelatin silver print. 24 × 16 cm (9 7/16 × 6 ¼ in.); Collection of the artist.

(© Danny Lyon, courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York)

Lance Williams, a senior reporter for Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, profiled several people faced with crippling student loan debt and harassment from collections agencies. New York Times columnist Dan Barry tells the story of a group of men with disabilities who were exploited by a turkey processing plant in Iowa. Photographer Danny Lyon on his first career retrospective in 25 years, "Message to the Future" at the Whitney Museum. On today's Please Explain, English and Law professor Stanley Fish reveals how to win arguments - from politics to personal relationships.

“Diane Arbus: in the beginning,” the darkly mesmerizing show currently on view at the Met Breuer outpost of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, brings together a selection of so-called early photographs. Most of them have not been publicly exhibited before and, taken as a whole, they seem likely to confirm and even enhance Arbus’s reputation as one of America’s most original and audacious artists. Her career was distressingly short. She committed suicide on July 26, 1971, at the age of 48. This month marks an unhappy anniversary.

Arbus’s death cast a shadow across her work and gave rise to her public image as the Sylvia Plath of photography, a depressed, sometimes desperate female artist adrift in a callous world. But the Met shows gives us a different Arbus, a geniusy, all-seeing photographer who knew exactly what she was doing and determined to challenge the conformist tenor of the 1950s. The exhibition starts in 1956 – the Eisenhower era, the heyday of Normal, when Americans believed they were supposed to aspire to the same, one-size-fits-all set of ideals.

Even in her earliest photographs, Arbus was fascinated by what we now call the world of extreme difference. She celebrated difference before we had a humane vocabulary for it, before the architects of political correctness taught us to bestow respect on people of all backgrounds and races and genders. Today, we no longer refer to midgets and transsexuals as freaks or weirdos, as was the custom in Arbus’s time. Rather, we speak of people affected by a spectrum of physical or psychological difference.

Starting in 1956, when she abandoned a decade-long career in advertising, Arbus trained her lens on dwarfs and giants and transgender men and female strippers in tacky nightclubs. My favorite photograph here shows a sullen schoolgirl standing on the curb on a winter day, awaiting a bus, her pointy hood saddling her with a foolish profile she never requested. Although Arbus supposedly found her subjects on the streets of New York, I wouldn’t call her a street photographer. She wasn’t interested in capturing the proverbial fleeting moment. Rather, she captures the moments that never end, the imperfect bodies that we are born into and which hold us captive, for better and worse, until death do us part.

'Girl with a pointy hood and white schoolbag at the curb, N.Y.C. 1957.'

(Estate of Diane Arbus/Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The show’s installation is frustratingly eccentric. Each of the 100-odd photographs is hung on its own freestanding wall, and the walls fill the second floor of the Met Breuer like so many trees in a labyrinthine forest. Chronology – the attempt to track an artist’s development – is tossed to the winds.

The installation of "Diane Arbus: in the beginning" at the Met Breuer.

(Deborah Solomon/WNYC)

Nonetheless, nothing can dilute the primal power of Arbus’s work – which, by the way, seems less driven by impulsive emotion than a conscious love of the constructed rewards of symmetry and full-frontal geometry.

Consider, for instance, “Lady on a bus, N.Y.C.,” from 1957, in which a middle-aged matron bundled in a fur coat stares out from one of the back rows of a city bus, oblivious to the young male passenger seated behind her. Above their heads, a partially visible advertisement offers a picture of happy motherhood – as if to contrast the idealized past with the harsh present. You can safely assume that nothing in an Arbus photograph is there by accident.

'Man in hat, trunks, socks and shoes, Coney Island, N.Y.' from 1960.

(Estate of Diane Arbus/Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Photographer Gideon Mendel had won several prestigious awards for his pictures of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. But in 2007, he decided to hand over the camera to his subjects.

He co-founded an organization called Through Positive Eyes and began teaching basic digital camera skills to people who were HIV positive, then encouraged them to capture images of their own lives. Since 2008, they have hosted workshops in 10 cities around the world: Mexico City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Bangkok, Port-au-Prince, London and, most recently, Durban, South Africa.

This week, Through Positive Eyes will debut an exhibition at the Durban Art Gallery, featuring 145 photographs. It's the first exhibit to draw from all the workshops. The opening on July 17 coincides with the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, which begins the next day.

South Africans who participated in the Durban workshop will guide visitors through the exhibit.

The new exhibit will go on to tour South Africa and then make stops in Europe and the United States.

We spoke to Mendel about the project. The interview and the photo captions have been edited for length and clarity. Note: Some comments in the interview and captions are explicit. The photographers have asked that only their first names be used to shield their identity and protect their families because of the stigma associated with being HIV positive in their home countries.

You had been photographing the HIV/AIDS epidemic for a number of years. Why did you start the Through Positive Eyes workshops?

The initial impulse came out of a conversation [around 2007] with my sister, who is an HIV/AIDS doctor based in Cape Town. She was saying she finally had good access to medications and treatments for patients but still had a lot of people dying who shouldn't be dying. They were dying because of stigma, because they were coming to treatment too late or were too afraid to test.

[I was] also feeling that I've done what I could in terms of photographing [people with] HIV and AIDS. There are such huge limitations being the outside photographer, the non-positive photographer photographing positive people, often photographing poor people in poorer countries. I just thought it was time to explore ways of handing over the camera [to] actual positive people.

Why did you think that's important?

[Their] work is so much more interesting than what professional photographers could be doing. It's much more intimate. The people take cameras into their own lives. No matter how compassionate you are as a photographer, you're never going to achieve that level of trust and intimacy.

Can you tell me about some of the most memorable images.

From our workshop in India, there's one image, it's probably my most favorite in the whole project. It's taken by Priya in Mumbai, a self-portrait of her sleeping with her goats. Her husband and her children had rejected her because she was HIV positive, and she was very isolated and she spoke about her animals being so much closer to her than people. It's such a deeply sad picture.

Sadly, she passed away a few months ago.

Recently, I was really struck by one of our participants in Durban, Silungile. She's a traditional healer, what's called a sangoma. She helps people communing with the ancestors. She invited us to a sangoma dancing event. These are events where they do hours of dancing to bring them closer to the ancestors. We got there and she had the camera set up on a tripod, she was dancing, multitasking, she would go around and press the shutter on the self-timer and then she would go back into the picture and continue dancing. It just seemed so natural.

What are some of the themes that stand out to you?

There are some very clear themes when you start to organize the pictures and play with them. There's one theme of sexual intimacy, images which depict relationships and in some situations sexuality.

Magda from Mexico City was a strong advocate for saying that just because we are HIV positive doesn't mean we aren't sexual beings. There's this terrible thing that people feel because they're positive they have to be asexual. I said to her, well Magda, why don't you try and photograph yourself while you're having an orgasm. And that's what she did. She did this amazing picture. She held the camera and photographed herself at that moment.

And of course that's the kind of thing that you can do yourself in a way that feels appropriate and right and an impossible thing for an external photographer to do in any way that would be appropriate.

How do you talk to the workshop participants about representing their own experience?

Photographers like myself in the '90s were rightly criticized for portraying people with HIV and AIDS as victims and in very disempowered ways. What I'm very excited about is there is no external gaze in this. People are looking in on their own lives and choosing ways to represent themselves.

I think the strength of the project is that we don't prescribe what people should do. But we push people very hard in terms of trying to have a very high-quality product.

When I work with students, I'm a very tough critic.

How do you critique their work?

We'll have an initial day of training, and then people go off and photograph that evening and the next morning and then come back. We quickly edit their work and show the whole group what everyone has done. We give feedback and show things which we think work. And people often respond to them.

Who's the audience for the Durban exhibition?

I hope participants and delegates leave the AIDS conference and come to the Durban Art Gallery so they can experience this exhibition and these presentations by the participants.

The idea after the conference is over is to bring a lot of school groups through the gallery.

That part of the world [South Africa] has one of the highest rates of HIV infection. And it begs the question of why, particularly why adolescent girls in South Africa are so vulnerable to infection by HIV.

I think there's been a lot of attention and initiatives but people often feel fatigued by all of that stuff. So it's important to try and do more creative responses like this. I hope it might have some kind of an impact on the teenagers who go through the exhibition [and] who are particularly vulnerable to the disease.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Photographer Robert Herman took hundreds of iPhone photos while travelling around the world from 2010 to 2015. He joins us to discuss his new collection, The Phone Book, which showcases the best of his work, captures everyday moments and explores the connections between two photographs displayed on opposing pages.

"Woman in a Hand Made Dress," by Robert Herman.

((c) 2015 Robert Herman, "The Phone Book," published by Schiffer.)

The iconic American photographer Diane Arbus is remembered for her extraordinary and arresting images of society’s outcasts — giants, dwarves, nudists, and various other Others. She used a classical style, placing her subjects in the center of the frame, though her subjects were far from the typical subjects of portrait photography.

Although some critics charge Arbus with exploiting her subjects, she developed intimate and trusting relationships with the people in her photographs. This personal emotional commitment, a sense of empathy and understanding for her subjects, is tangible in Arbus’ work.

Arbus set out to explore the darker side of prosperous postwar America. Her subversive, daring photographs brought marginal characters into the light, like the uncanny return of the repressed. As she explained in an interview with Studs Terkel, “I think there are things that nobody would see unless I photographed them.”

Arbus’ early work is currently the subject of an exhibit at the Met Breuer in New York City that runs through November.

This story originally aired on the Fishko Files. It was produced by Sara Fishko, edited by Karen Frillman and mixed by William Moss. Thanks to the Studs Terkel Radio Archive for the recording of Diane Arbus.

Neil Selkirk is an accomplished portrait photographer. He began his career in London during the swinging 1960s, when being a magazine photographer meant wild parties, fancy cars, and beautiful girls. 

While assisting the photographer Richard Avedon on a shoot, he encountered a photograph by Diane Arbus: “A Family One Evening in a Nudist Camp, Pennsylvania, 1965.” Selkirk was shocked by the frankness of the subjects — neither slim nor attractive yet absolutely comfortable in their nakedness. “I just thought it was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen in my life,” he remembers. “I was terrified. I actually thought about running out the door into the street and never coming back.”

Arbus spent her career creating portraits of misfits, disabled people, and other outsiders. When Selkirk eventually met Arbus, he was taken with the generous, curious manner she had with everyone she met. “People gave themselves to Diane,” he explains. “What she tended to photograph was their comfort with the fact that she was photographing them. Nobody felt exploited.” 

After he studied with Arbus, Selkirk found himself transformed. “I realized that the photographer that I had been when I arrived in the United States no longer existed at all. I was completely incapable of embellishing anything. I was solely absorbed with the photograph as a document.”

After Arbus’ death, Selkirk worked with her estate as the only authorized printer of her photographs. And her portrait of nudists remains the only print that he owns himself: “It insists that you dispassionately observe — that that is enough.”

(Originally aired August 17, 2012)

→ Is there a photograph, song, book, or other work of art that has changed your life? Tell us in a comment or by email at studio360@wnyc.org.

Plates have long had a seat at the table, but they've suffered in silence – quietly bearing the indignities of everything from barbecue sauce to mustard stains.

Until now.

In February 2016, Brooklyn-based comedian Brandon Scott Wolf created an Instagram account called "Empty Plates of New York," which is exactly what it sounds like. Wolf posts pictures of empty plates after eating meals around New York, describes the meal, and then includes a "quote" from the plate. ("Life can get messy, but thankfully I always find my way to the dishwasher," muses Lawrence, a brown plate from Midtown.)

"Plates have voices as well," Wolf tells The Salt. As of this writing, his account has 2,098 followers.

Wolf says the muse struck when he was trying to increase his social media presence. He had a Facebook, a Twitter account and a website where women could apply to date him, but no Instagram.

"I started looking at the app, and it was primarily food and pictures of Ariana Grande," Wolf says. "I thought, I could do something with food."

He took inspiration from the popular project "Humans of New York," which pairs portraits of people with autobiographical quotes from the subjects. Then Wolf added a twist: Ditch the people for plates.

"I honestly say, 'What does this plate have to say?'" Wolf explains. "I end up writing from the viewpoint of a basket who says, 'Hey, I'm not a plate, but I identify as a plate.'"

"At first, I thought he was kidding, but he actually is serious about it," says college friend Dan Sepe, who works in PR – an industry that seems to have failed plates completely.

Sepe, who has eaten out many times with Wolf, recounts a post-meal photo shoot at a Korean restaurant. "He took the plate and was positioning it. ... It was very apparent that people were looking and going, what's this guy doing with this plate?"

Still, Sepe believes in Wolf's project. "He's telling the story from the plate's perspective," Sepe says. "It's less about the person, and it's more about the plate."

Wolf aims to post one plate picture per day. He compares his images to the work of splatter artist Jackson Pollock "for obvious reasons." The prospect that some people might find his dirty plates unappetizing or even disgusting doesn't trouble Wolf. "Like most people say of art of any kind," he says, "as long as you feel something and want to talk about it, that's good."

Some of his Instagram followers appreciate the lack of culinary appeal. "I like that it doesn't make me hungry," says follower Samantha Jane Gurewitz, who works primarily as a makeup artist in New York City.

The empty plates are also a hit with the artist's mother. "The empty plates show me that he nourishes himself correctly," says Andrea Wolf. She says she never had trouble getting her son to clean his plate as a child and that his favorite food was broccoli. "I'm so proud of my son. I just can't say enough about him ... I'm maybe his biggest fan."

But Wolf hopes to dish out more than just Instagram photos. He's toying with the idea of a cookbook featuring exclusively pictures of empty plates and potentially donating proceeds to the Food Bank for New York City. Until then, he continues to bring power to platters and succor to saucers.

"The Internet is very strange," says Wolf of his Instagram's success. But he says the project is helping him grow. "This project is based on the dedication to write every day," Wolf says, "and really a testament to the amount of time I have on my hands."

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

A national convention aims to offer a space for a political party to unify — to hone its message, set aside internal divisions and move forward toward a shared adversary. As Republicans sweep up confetti and try to forget the Ted Cruz-Donald Trump flame war, Democrats pack their bags for Philadelphia, hoping to unite their own badly split party.

It's easy to say the divisions that surface in a major election year are somehow worse than the one before, anger and divisiveness compounding but with little change. The political rhetoric stays the same, year after year: "... We are going to fix the system."

During her week in Cleveland, photographer Gabriella Demczuk explored the ways that people are embracing and challenging the Republican Party's mission in this election — both from inside and outside the party. Here is a selection of what she saw.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Susan Faludi had been estranged from her father, photographer Steven Faludi, for years when she learned that he had transitioned to a woman and changed his name to Stefánie at age 76. In her memoir, In the Darkroom, Faludi travels to Hungary to reunite with her father. Her search for identity is set against the tumultuous politics and history of the region.  

On Sunday, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt won the men's 100 meters in Rio, retaining his status as the fastest man in the world.

One photo from the day visually defines the career of this record-breaking athlete. It's from the semifinals.

In it, Bolt is leading the pack. He glances over his left shoulder, grinning, just before he crosses the finish line. His competitors are barely nipping at his heels. Everything below the waist is a blur.

Cameron Spencer, a Getty Images photographer from Australia, captured that moment. "I think there's no greater athlete on the planet at the moment," he tells NPR's Ari Shapiro.

This is the third Summer Olympics at which Spencer has photographed Bolt. "What people love about him, and what photographers love about him as well, is he's such an entertainer," Spencer says. "He's so confident and he plays up to the crowd, and I think when he walks into that stadium, it's electric. And last night was no different."

Interview Highlights

On how Spencer knew he had the photo

When [Bolt] went past me, you know, this happens in 9 1/2 seconds, and I kind of knew at the 70-meter mark he was going to probably be ahead of the rest. ... When he passed me around the 70-meter mark, I was infield and I sort of panned my camera with him ... it wasn't till I looked at the back of my camera — firstly hoping that something was sharp and that I'd captured it — I then realized he's almost looking straight at me and he had the big grin going, and the eyes, and I knew that it was special once I saw that.

On the scene in the Olympic stadium

When there's that many people there to witness greatness and the hush goes over the crowd before that starter's gun goes off, it's spine-tingling stuff. ... He's got his famous [lightning] pose he always does, but he's done that a million times. And I think last night, giving that cheeky grin to the other competitors was something that made it different.

On what it's like to photograph Bolt

I've never met him personally, but I have done a lot of running around trying to chase him, last night included. ... I did the lap of honor with him. ... It's that balancing act between interaction and also being a fly on the wall, letting him run around — and you also have to avoid tripping over everything around the stadium because you're also running backwards in front of him.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Watch Video | Listen to the Audio

JUDY WOODRUFF: A photography museum is reopening in a sleek new home in New York City, with an exhibition to make you think twice about all the cameras that surround us.

Jeffrey Brown has the story.

JEFFREY BROWN: A stark message stops visitors in their tracks at the threshold of the International Center of Photography’s new home: “By entering this area, you consent to being photographed, filmed and/or otherwise recorded, and surrender the right to the use of such material throughout the universe in perpetuity.”

And that’s what the museum’s first exhibition in its brand-new space in Lower Manhattan explores, the changing role of privacy in a world inundated with surveillance and oversharing.

PAULINE VERMARE, Associate Curator, “Public, Private, Secret”: What is your secret life? How can you keep it secret? I think that’s one of the keys of this exhibition is really that, keeping your privacy, but also making sure that your secret life remains your secret life.

JEFFREY BROWN: Pauline Vermare is the associate curator of Public, Private, Secret, a mix of visual media, modern and historical.

There’s this 1946 Yale Joel photograph of a couple through a two-way mirror for a series in “LIFE” magazine, and more contemporary surveillance art by Jill Magid, who captured herself on surveillance cameras, and Merry Alpern, who secretly shot through the bathroom window of a seedy sex club for her “Dirty Windows” series.

The museum itself has come a long way from its 1974 beginnings in a Manhattan mansion under the direction of famed Hungarian photographer Cornell Capa.

Since then, the world of photography has changed.

MARK LUBELL, Executive Director, International Center of Photography: It is the most Democratic format. It is in the hands of all of us. We all are now visually communicating.

JEFFREY BROWN: Mark Lubell is the current director of the museum, known as the ICP. He’s overseen an institutional shift, from photojournalism and art photography to an embrace of today’s digital media landscape, where cell phone cameras are ubiquitous.

MARK LUBELL: The big difference is, it used to be a few people taking images that went out to millions. And now it’s millions and millions of people going out to millions and millions of people. I think that’s a seismic shift in the medium, and it’s something that we should be looking at and exploring.

JEFFREY BROWN: In the inaugural exhibition, that means a sometimes jarring juxtaposition of images.

PAULINE VERMARE: We start with historical precedents, and everything is thrown together. It’s not like there’s a hierarchy. Everything is at the same level.

JEFFREY BROWN: A lineup of mid-20th century mug shots taken by unknown photographers sits just beneath portraits of four Muslim women, prisoners in a concentration camp during the Algerian War. They were forced to pose without their veils.

In our own time, people expose themselves.

WOMAN: I’m not gay.

MAN: I am gay.

WOMAN: I am so gay.

JEFFREY BROWN: Offering up private thoughts online, in the form of video diaries available to anyone. Artist Natalie Bookchin sifted through hundreds of those and created an installation titled “Testament.”

NATALIE BOOKCHIN, Artist, “Testament”: I’m choreographing these moments and organizing them to try to make some sense out of them.

I think that there’s a sense, first of all, that this stuff is junk, right, that it’s throwaway, that we shouldn’t watch it, that it’s all just narcissistic, and that it’s kids that are doing silly things with their phone.

And what I’m trying to show in this work, that it’s not just kids, that it’s like — it’s sort of people. You know, people are doing this, old people, young people, men, women.

JEFFREY BROWN: We see and hear some subjects alone, others in a kind of chorus focused on a particular theme. One of her pieces examined people who had lost their jobs in the recession.

NATALIE BOOKCHIN: I wanted in the work to both show the way that sort of people were alone, in some way trying to engage in a political discussion or a social discussion, something that just happened that’s really bad, because the economy is crashing and people are losing their jobs.

But then, at the same time, people are isolated and alone, and they’re speaking to themselves.

JEFFREY BROWN: The culture of celebrity is also on display in many different forms.

Patrick McMullan’s Facebook collage from this year’s New York Fashion Week. A series of Andy Warhol Polaroids framed on mirrors, so you’re part of the subject’s 15 minutes of fame too.

And then there’s the placement of this untitled self-portrait by famed art photographer Cindy Sherman.

This is art. She’s shown in every museum in the world.

PAULINE VERMARE: Yes. Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: And then you have Kim Kardashian selfies, a book about selfies. Somehow, they belong together, you’re saying, in our world?

PAULINE VERMARE: Well, specifically, this image, in fact, by Cindy Sherman, because she’s pretending to be a star, you know, hunted by the paparazzo, this is what we’re talking about, that tension and the resistance.

And this is — our show — this show is generally about the resistance, or the opposite of resistance, which is what Kim Kardashian does.

JEFFREY BROWN: Which is, take my picture.

PAULINE VERMARE: Just take it, and here it is for you.

JEFFREY BROWN: The museum also wants us to question the very definition of photography and who’s a photographer.

MARK LUBELL: What I do on my phone is not photography. I am creating images.

JEFFREY BROWN: We’re not taking photos on our phones? What are we doing?

MARK LUBELL: Well, we’re communicating. We’re communicating. But we’re communicating using the image.

I want to look at where society is today. The thematic of sort of understanding the world that we are today, and looking at it, and examining it, and debating it is central to ICP’s DNA. And I think that’s why the show makes a lot of sense.

JEFFREY BROWN: The exhibition Public, Private, Secret is on view through early January 2017.

From New York, I’m Jeffrey Brown for the “PBS NewsHour.”

The post How one exhibit is rethinking privacy in a world that’s always watching appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

In 1977, Deborah Barsel, a bored assistant registrar at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, N.Y., decided to try a fun side project. She would create a cookbook made up of recipes and images from famous photographers of the day. She sent letters to various artists and put an ad in the museum's magazine asking for submissions. In return, she received 120 photos, recipes and even a postcard from urban photographer John Gossage saying simply: "I eat out."

Then, like the projects of so many who leave their jobs for graduate school, the submissions were filed in a box titled "Photographer's Cookbook" and stored away for 35 years. The museum's current curator Lisa Hostetler found the box and brought it to print.

The Photographer's Cookbook is a testament to the lost art of recipe writing. Today, thousands of recipes are just a quick Google search away, but there's often very little personality to accompany the bare lists of ingredients and instructions. Then there are the recipes in this book — many of which are not the photographers' dream recipes or even the most impressive items in their culinary arsenals.

Portrait photographer Hans Namuth's peasant bread is less a recipe than a praise of the individuality of bread. Rather than giving exact times, he writes that the baker should "let rise until doubled in size. (One hour? Two? It depends on the time of year, the temperature of your house, etc.)" Even the baking temperature itself depends on the oven. He notes, "I have baked bread in many ovens (always preferring gas ovens) and never found two alike."

Eileen Cowin writes in the introduction to a recipe for "vegetable cheese casserole" that she once read a Tom Robbins novel that mentioned a spray-on substance that made everything taste like chocolate chip cookies. "That would be my favorite recipe if I could find it. Since I haven't ... " she trails off, before writing down the ingredients for the much more realistic casserole.

Ralph Steiner sent in an offbeat recipe for the loftily named "zwei vier minute eier," or "two four-minute eggs." This is not a guy you should ask to cook you breakfast, much less put in a cookbook, yet his recipe speaks volumes about the type of person he was outside of his photography and experimental films. He proudly states that his two greatest culinary accomplishments are "How to take a box of cornflakes down from the shelf" and "How to boil 2 four-minute eggs." He instructs readers to "watch one's watch watchfully for 240 seconds" after dropping the eggs into the hot water.

Forget walking a mile in someone's shoes — the best way to get to know someone is to spend a day (not literally) in their stomach. Each photographer chose one photo to go with the recipes, so the recipes themselves are just part of the fun. The photos are subject to artistic license, however. They are often more representative of the photographer's work than of the recipes themselves.

Neal Slavin, who specializes in group portraits of everything from bingo clubs to pugs to Miss America contestants, is one of the few who took a photo directly for the cookbook. At first glance, his hot dog recipe is simple. But he then proceeds to give 12 different frankfurter toppings themed to "regional costumes": the New York frankfurter (with sauerkraut); the Southern frankfurter (macaroni and cheese, bacon and even more cheddar cheese); and the Polynesian frankfurter (pineapple rings, cantaloupe and chutney). In the photograph, all 12 types of hot dogs are grouped together in their full culinary glory.

Some, like Americana photographer Stephen Shore, who many consider the godfather of the type of food diary photography that regularly graces Instagram, chose a photo that has less to do with the recipe and more to do with a jarring juxtaposition of food and art. Despite the sweetness of the food, Shore's recipe for "key lime pie supreme" contains no extra narrative. The photo, titled only "New York City, New York", shows the remnants of what looks like a late night — a cup of coffee spilling into its saucer, a stained table cloth, a cigar and the check signed by Shore himself. If this was a night that had a key lime pie in it, the dessert is long gone.

The book's introduction notes that cooking and photography — particularly darkroom photography — have similar subjective elements of mixing, experimentation and tweaking. A person's favorite recipe can shed light on who they are, where they come from, how they view life — or whether they'd just like to forget about cooking and eat out.

Recipe: Ansel Adams's Eggs Poached In Beer

1⁄4 cup (1/8 pound) butter

Mixed spices

Dash sherry

1 bottle dark malt liquor or strong ale (ordinary beer is not strong enough)

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

2 pieces toast

Dash paprika

Melt butter in microwave oven, but do not allow to brown. Add a dash of mixed spices and sherry.

In a small bowl, microwave malt or ale with 1/4 teaspoon salt just to the boiling point. Carefully slide eggs into this hot liquid, cover with paper plate or glass bowl (to retain thermal heat), and cook as desired in microwave. (See note below on microwave cooking.)

While eggs are cooking in microwave, make two pieces of toast. Spread part of the butter-spice mix over the toast.

Serve eggs on the toast, and pour over the rest of the butter-spice mix. Add a dash of paprika.

Note on microwave cooking:

I like my eggs poached soft. I find that 1 egg in the hot ale or malt takes about 1 minute to cook, 2 eggs about 2 minutes, etc., all the way up to 8 eggs about 8 minutes. When working with as many as 8 eggs, the bowl should be moved around every 2–3 minutes.

Ralph Steiner's Zwei Vier Minuten Eier

Basically I am more a Basse Cuisine than a Haut Cuisine chef. I got my Cordon Blue not in Paris but in Erie, Pennsylvania. There I learned two accomplishments:

a. How to take a box of corn flakes down from the shelf.

b. How to boil 2 four minute eggs.

Eggs are important! You, of course, recall Samuel Butler's famous solution of the ancient question: "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" He said: "The egg came first: a chicken is only an egg's way of making another egg."

Now for my "favorite"/only recipe:

One puts water an egg's diameter deep into a pan. Turns heat on. When boiling briskly, drop two eggs in from low altitude. Turn heat off. One watches one's watch watchfully for two hundred and forty seconds. At the stroke of two forty, one removes eggs. On opening eggs I always manage to get some bits of shell—or is it "will" in my eggs. I never know when to use "shell" and when to use "will." Never mind; a bit of shell ingested gives a man shell power.

William Eggleston's Cheese Grits Casserole

Makes 6-8 servings

1 cup grits

1 teaspoon salt

4 cups water

1 stick butter

1/2 pound velveeta cheese

3 eggs, slightly beaten

1/3 cup milk

Cook as usual grits in salted water until done. Then add butter, cheese, eggs, and milk. Stir until melted smooth. Place in quart casserole, and bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees.

Imogen Cunningham's Borscht

For one thing I do not consider Alice B. Toklas a GREAT cook. Very likely her cooking contributed to the death of Gertrude and herself. Besides her beef stew cooked in burgundy, I can think only of her beautiful soups beginning with gazpacho from everywhere. I do not know how to put it, but exotic eatery is very interesting to me. I think we are all TOO addicted to salt and that we can get enough in vegetables that offer it. We do not know the flavor of anything because we doctor it too much. While I am on soups, I should tell you what I do for borscht. I make a good soup of beef and meat and bones; put some fresh beets in, and when I am ready to serve it, I make it half mine and half Manischewitz (commercial bottle of borscht). I prefer it cold with sour cream.

Neal Slavin: Nylen's Frankfurters in Full Dress

My most delightful and favorite "tidbit gastronomique" is called the "Nylen Full-Dress Frank." It's named after a professional colleague, Judy Nylen, who not by chance is also its creator ...

The frankfurter need not be left naked! It can be formalized, decked out, and ethnicized for a sumptuous midnight snack or fun party fare. Condiments, garnishes, and accents can take on any theme. Those described below are "regional costumes" to be grouped buffet style for a party so guests can create their own masterpieces.

Serves 24

48 Frankfurters

48 Buns

Bring 6 quarts of water to a boil in one or more large pots. Remove pots from heat, and put in frankfurters. Cover and let stand 7 minutes. Frankfurters can be served right from the pot, or kept warm on a hot tray set on low. They will last several hours in warm water.

Buns can be warmed in an electric bun warmer or an improvised version created by placing a basket in an electric frying pan or wok, wrapping buns in a large napkin and covering.

DRESSINGS:

New Yorker

2 cups sauerkraut

Heat sauerkraut through and keep warm on hot tray; smother frankfurter.

German

1 cup applesauce

1 cup crab apples, sliced

Spoon applesauce over frankfurter, and garnish with crab apples.

Californian

1 pint cherry tomatoes, sliced

1 head of curly Spanish lettuce

1/2 cup Thousand Island dressing

Place lettuce under frankfurter which has been sliced lengthwise; stuff with tomato slices down the center and top with dressing.

Southern

2 cups frozen macaroni and cheese, baked according to package

1/2 pound bacon, cut in half and fried lightly crisp

1 cup cheddar cheese

Spoon macaroni onto bun, put in frankfurter, cover with a little more macaroni, top with bacon and grated cheese, and melt in toaster oven.

Mexican

4 frying peppers, in rings

2 cups chili, without beans

1 cup onion, finely chopped

Heat chili through, and keep warm on hot tray. String peppers, 3 or 4, on to frankfurter, top with chili and onions.

Chinese

1/2 cup water chestnuts, sliced

1 cup canned sliced peaches

1/2 cup bamboo shoots, sliced

1/2 cup sweet and sour sauce

Cut frankfurter in short, diagonal slits, and stuff these with water chestnuts. Top with peaches, bamboo shoots, and sauce.

Middle Eastern

1 cup kumquats, peeled and quartered

1 large red onion, sliced in rings

1/2 cup mayonnaise

Slice frankfurter lengthwise and stuff with 3 or 4 kumquat quarters, alternating with red onion. Surround with mayonnaise.

Irish

2 cups pickle relish—Emerald style

1 small bunch watercress

Smother frankfurter in relish, and garnish with watercress "clovers."

New Englander

2 cups baked beans

1 bunch curly parsley

Heat beans through, and keep warm on hot tray; spoon over frankfurter, and garnish with parsley.

Polynesian

1 cup pineapple rings, halved

1/2 cantaloupe, cubed

1/2 cup Major Grey's Chutney (may substitute any mango chutney)

Place pineapple rings over frankfurter, garnish with cantaloupe, and top with chutney.

All American

1 cup brown mustard (or any favorite)

1/4 cup snipped chives

Smother frankfurter in traditional manner.

Italian

1 cup pizza sauce

1 cup grated mozzarella cheese

1 red bell pepper, in thin strips

1 green pepper, sliced in thin strips

12 fresh mushrooms, sliced

Keep pizza sauce warm on hot tray. Spoon over bun, put in frankfurter, and top with grated cheese, pepper strips, and mushrooms. Put frankfurter in toaster oven to melt cheese.

Stephen Shore's Key Lime Pie Supreme

Crust:

Make graham cracker crust following instructions on box, but increasing all the quantities 50 percent. Be sure to use brown sugar.

Filling:

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

3 tablespoons corn starch

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups water

3 egg yolks

1 tablespoon butter

Juice of 2 large limes (approximately 1/3 to 1/2 cup)

Grated rind of 2 limes

One container of heavy whipping cream

Combine sugar, flour, cornstarch, and salt in a saucepan, and stir in water gradually. Cook on medium heat until thickened. Add the beaten egg yolks gradually and return to a low heat and cook for 2 minutes stirring constantly.

Stir in the butter, lime juice, and rind and allow them to cool slightly. Pour into the baked pastry shell and cool.

Topping:

Make whipped cream with 1 container of heavy whipping cream and sweeten with sugar.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

R.J. Kern wears many hats. He’s an award-winning wedding photographer, a fine arts photographer and a taekwondo instructor.

R.J. Kern is a wedding and fine art photographer based in Minneapolis.

“Having the balance between different jobs helps me. If there’s a creative problem I’m struggling with, having other work keeps me productive, keeps the income stream coming through so I’m not just sitting back and twiddling my fingers.”

In his commercial wedding work, he says he is fully focused on his clients’ desires, using a photo-journalistic approach for candid shots plus formal portraiture for traditional photos. “I like to focus on the small details which are symbolic at such an important event,” Kern said from his home in Minneapolis.

For four years he’s been retracing his ancestral heritage through Norway, Iceland and Ireland shooting a series that he calls “Divine Animals: The Bovidae.”

“A big part of this project is spending time in the environment where my ancestors were, trying to capture that sense of place. But I’m also inspired by European paintings from the 1850’s”

“Divine Animals: The Bovidae.” Photo by R.J. Kern.

He recently received a grant from the Minnesota state arts board to shoot 4-H exhibitors and their animals at county fairs from across the state. But instead of shooting the winners, he shoots the animals that come in last place. He calls the project, “The Unchosen Ones.”

“I’ve started to see these fairs as breeding shows that have become almost like beauty contests. The animals are judged on very superficial traits. But I also wanted to document the sense of pride that these kids have in their heritage of raising animals. In this era when so many family farms are being lost to corporate enterprises, I think it’s important to document these county fairs.”

His “Unchosen Ones” project will be featured in a solo exhibition at a gallery in Brainerd in February.

“The Unchosen Ones.” Photo by R.J. Kern.

When not shooting weddings or animal portraits, R.J. teaches taekwondo at Lakes Martial Arts. He earned his black belt in 2002 and became an instructor three years later.

“My goal is teaching life skills through martial arts. And if they learn to kick and punch, great.”

Watch next: This traveling clown troupe brings moments of joy to Syrian refugees

Having such a broad range of career pursuits can be challenging. Kern says of his 12 hour days that he has to “work smart, not just hard.” He closes his martial arts studio during the busy summer wedding season and fits the fine arts work in wherever he can. But he says he thinks the seemingly disparate careers actually complement each other.

“They’re very different but they each help me be better at the other activity.”

Video was produced and edited by Maria Bartholdi. This story original aired on “MN Original”, a PBS award-winning weekly arts series celebrating Minnesota’s creative community. “MN Original” is produced by Twin Cities PBS (TPT). Local Beat is an ongoing series on Art Beat that features arts and culture stories from PBS member stations around the nation.

The post When photography and martial arts collide appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Can one photo help end a war?

That's what people are wondering about the image of a little Syrian boy covered head to toe in a thick layer of dust, his face bloodied, as he sits in a bright orange chair.

His name is Omran Daqneesh and he's 5. On Wednesday, he was rescued from a building in Aleppo hit by an air strike.His bare feet dangling over the edge of his seat, he looks stunned and dazed.

The image was pulled from a YouTube video posted by the Aleppo Media Center and published in news reports that same day. Since then it has made global headlines — bringing new attention to the ongoing agonies of the Syrian conflict.

There's no disputing the power of the photo. "It's heartbreaking, compelling, beautifully composed, scary," says MaryAnne Golon, director of photography of The Washington Post. "Any mother in the world would want to scoop him up and take care of him."

It seems as if many others feel the same way. The video has already been viewed 3.4 million times and has taken on a life of its own. In just 48 hours, Daqneesh's image turned into a social media meme, inspired a cartoon illustrating the tough choices that Syrian children face, and was used to express outrage against the Syrian war.

But the world has seen an image like this before— of Alan Kurdi, a 3-year-old Syrian boy who drowned while fleeing to Greece with his family. His lifeless body was photographed on a Turkish beach in September 2015.

The reaction to Kurdi's image gives some indications of what a photo can do. It galvanized Europeans to urge their governments to open their doors to more refugees, as reported by the BBC, and sparked an outpouring of global giving.

Mercy Corps, an international group that provides humanitarian aid to Syrians, saw $2.3 million in donations in the month after Kurdi's image was first shared, says communications officer Christy Delafield. By comparison, the group raised $4.5 million in the prior four years.

Similar increases were reported by groups like World Vision, UNHCR and Islamic Relief, according to Deutsche Welle, a German broadcasting company.

Unfortunately, Delafield is not seeing the same reaction with Daqneesh's photo. "I'm not sure if it's because of the Olympics or the election, but it seems like the news cycle has moved on quickly," she says.

While Mercy Corps received $50,000 in the first 24 hours after the image was published, Delafield is disappointed that the number has "trickled off" since yesterday.

Greg Ramm, vice president for humanitarian response at Save the Children, thinks the photo has made a difference in other ways: "It's reminded the world of the suffering inside Syria. It has motivated people to help. And it does put pressure on politicians."

Earlier today, for example, political leaders in Scotland called on leaders in the U.K. and the European Union to demand a Russian ceasefire in Aleppo. "I was horrified to see this photo, which lays bare the reality and human cost of the war in Syria," said First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of Scotland, according to The National, a Scottish newspaper.

But Ed Kashi, an American photojournalist who documents social and political issues, is doubtful of the photo's long-term impact. "Maybe it will inspire people to contribute money or be concerned for a day or a week, but ultimately, it's not going to move the needle in any real way," he says.

In the age of viral photos and memes on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, he says: "The intensity and graphicness of the images that we see now are numbing. We see it every week. Yet we just scroll forward."

The lack of action "makes me want to cry," he adds.

John Hilary is the executive director of War On Want, a global justice organization and an outspoken critic of "poverty porn" — using images of the poor to solicit charitable donations. Like Kashi, he doesn't put too much stock in the photographs of Kurdi or Daqneesh.

"Images on their own can provoke feelings and awareness, but they can't give you the sort of political understanding and analysis that you need to respond properly," he says.

Hilary says it's tough for the public to translate what they're seeing into real solutions.

"It's very unclear to people as to which strings they can pull to make a difference," he says. "That's the most profound difficulty of this image. There isn't an obvious mechanism through which we can turn our anger and compassion into change."

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: But, first: The world’s newest country, South Sudan, established in 2011, again stands on the brink of civil war. A peace deal signed last year between rival governing factions is in tatters. More than one-sixth of the country’s 12 million citizens have been displaced, and the humanitarian crisis there is worsening by the day.

John Yang has the story.

RELATED: A National Geographic program trains youth to use a camera as a cultural passport

JOHN YANG: For that view, we turn to photographer Sebastian Rich, who has covered conflict zones for more than four decades. He has been to South Sudan many times. He is there now on assignment for UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency.

He joins us now via Skype from Juba, the capital.

Sebastian, thanks for joining thus evening.

First of all, tell us how it feels now, what the situation is like on the ground now.

SEBASTIAN RICH, Photojournalist: Well, the situation is a little more tense than it was, obviously, before the recent fighting.

The recent fighting has put the people, the ordinary people in the street. They’re much more tense than they were. There’s not so many friendly faces. If you walk in the streets of Juba now, you’re not greeted the same way you were a couple of months ago or even a year ago, when I came last year.

JOHN YANG: And how is this affecting the children that you’re covering, that you’re there watching, looking at behalf on UNICEF, particularly the issues of malnutrition?

SEBASTIAN RICH: Well, it’s affecting the children very badly.

And there’s 250,000, a quarter-of-a-million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition. And that’s not including the children who just got malnutrition, the first stages of.

So, what’s happened is that the children who were actually starting to recover from severe acute malnutrition before this recent fighting, when the fighting happened, those children couldn’t come back to the hospitals to get their follow-up treatment and children that had started to get malnutrition couldn’t get to the hospitals either.

So now we have this huge increase in malnutrition and severe cases of malnutrition. And UNICEF is trying its very, very best to keep on top of this disaster.

JOHN YANG: And you spent time some today, you were telling me, with a young girl who actually has been making progress. And is there danger that this could reverse what’s happening?

SEBASTIAN RICH: Yes. It’s not all bad news. There are wonderful individual cases.

Last year, I photographed a little in a hospital in Juba. And she was on death’s door. She was a tiny little stick insect. And I stayed with her for a couple of weeks. And she got a bit better and bit better. And, today, six months later, when I came back, I photographed her and filmed her with her family, singing and dancing to tunes on my iPhone.

And it was fantastic to see a success story for once in this mess here.

JOHN YANG: And is there danger that, with this increased tension, that some of that progress could be reversed or lost?

SEBASTIAN RICH: Yes, of course.

Children will die. I mean, I don’t see how you can sugarcoat it. If you don’t get treated for severe acute malnutrition, you will die. It’s not only malnutrition. There’s complications with malnutrition. A lot of these children have on top of that tuberculosis and malaria.

So, yes, put it very simply, they will die.

JOHN YANG: And another area that this sort of increased tension threatens are child soldiers.

We have seen reports that, perhaps in preparation for tensions, that the recruitment of child soldiers is on the increase again. You have actually been watching programs where they have been trying to take them out of those — of that situation.

SEBASTIAN RICH: Yes.

Well, once again, the renewed fighting has caused more problems, because now much more children will be coerced into trying to be forced into joining armed groups.

But UNICEF, once again, has been very, very successful in taking these children who have recently been released from armed groups and getting them back into education, and some of them for the very, very first times in their lives. And this is a great success. And it’s going to be a great shame not to see this success actually, you know, flower into something very good.

JOHN YANG: You talk about these former child soldiers going into school again.

UNICEF says that half of children in South Sudan don’t go to school, which is the highest proportion, they say, in the world. What’s it like for a child? What’s a child’s life like in Juba in South Sudan?

SEBASTIAN RICH: Well, all over — yes, you’re quite right. South Sudan, there’s more children now out of school than any other country on the planet.

And what you have to remember, that the war here and the ongoing wars and troubles here have just basically stripped most infrastructure. And so school, they don’t have desks. They don’t have anything to sit on.

I photographed yesterday children sitting on metal car wheels with no tire on it to listen to their teacher, sitting on engine parts, sitting on buckets, sitting on little stoves that they take to school. And when they bring the stoves home, their mother takes the stoves and cooks them lunch on it.

It’s more, more than basic, actually. And these are dirt floors as well.

JOHN YANG: Sebastian Rich, thanks so much for not only your insights on what’s going on, on the ground in South Sudan, but also for your powerful images of what is going on.

SEBASTIAN RICH: My pleasure. Thank you very much, indeed.

The post A portrait of turmoil in South Sudan, from behind the lens appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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Read the full transcript below.

In 1957, after being fired from a shoe factory, Moodley opened a studio in a working class area and served mostly “non-whites” like himself.

In line with his political views — that’s Moodley at a rally — his studio in the 70s and 80s became a safe space for anti-apartheid activists.

STEVEN DUBIN: It reminds me very much of African-American barbershops.

IVETTE FELICIANO: Columbia University professor steven dubin curated the exhibit and spoke to “newshour weekend” by skype from south africa.

STEVEN DUBIN: People can come, they can get news, they can share news, they can talk about ideas. You know, Kitty’s studio, you know, served the same function.

IVETTE FELICIANO: While photojournalists often documented the protests and violence of the time, these photos tell a different story.

STEVEN DUBIN: Even under the the most restricted conditions people were able to fashion lives for themselves and perhaps they were able to imagine lives for themselves that did not exist before that.

IVETTE FELICIANO: The 38 photos on display are often playful. A lady wearing a lampshade on her head. Three men dancing. Moodley also captured the bending of social norms.

Here a woman wears traditional Zulu female attire, and then she’s seen in pants typically worn by Zulu men. According to Dubin, dressing like that would have been considered daring. But Moodley’s studio allowed for self-expression during a turbulent time.

He died in 1987 — seven years before apartheid collapsed. These photos will be on display until September third.

The post Black-and-white portraits from apartheid-era South Africa appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

In Baton Rouge, La., people are using whatever tools they have to help their community recover from the flood.

That includes cameras.

Four photographers have been creating portraits of those affected. Their project, "Humans of the Water," focuses not on what people lost, but on what they saved.

One of those photographers is Collin Richie. He says documentary photography isn't typically his style. Most of his work involves snapping photos for weddings, magazines and corporate advertisements.

But when a local magazine asked him to photograph someone who was using his boat to rescue neighbors from the flood waters, the story drew him in. He went back to photograph another flood victim, and then he went back again. That's how this project was born.

In one of Richie's images, a man is surrounded by thousands of water-soaked photographs scattered over a deck, on tables and chairs, some are weighed down with stones to dry out.

"He was scared of the wind," Richie says. "He didn't want any of the items to blow into the still-flooded yard and take it any worse. You can see albums, too. They're trying to separate the pages. He had lived in the same home for 72 years. He was 82 years old. And so it was, basically he referenced it as his entire family history."

Another photo shows a young man sitting beside an American flag that his roommate brought home after serving in Afghanistan.

"They were both veterans, and it was actually a group of them all live close by, and they were all trying to salvage their Navy medals, their Army medals, their flags, their service flags," Richie says. "Those things were the most important to them."

Richie says what surprised him about working on this project was how humble people were despite all they had lost.

"They ask, 'Why are you taking a picture of me? My neighbor took 7 feet. I took 6 feet,' " he says. "They always related to someone who had it worse. And they don't want the focus to be on them because they know so many of their family and friends are in such a worse spot. They're like, 'Well, I have a place to stay. You need to go photograph these people over here who are still looking.' "

When Richie met people, he would ask them about the one thing they took with them.

"They'd pause, and immediately walk me to the one item," he says. "They knew exactly what was most important."

Many of these photographs capture the role of faith in people's lives. Richie says one of the images that stood out to him was of a man holding a sign that said, "Faith." It was the only item the man recognized that wasn't in complete disarray.

"He took a video of it himself," Richie says. "He wanted to remember that moment. And the video shows him walking into still water in the home, and the faith sign is cock-eyed, and he corrects it. And then the video closes."

Richie's photos not only capture what people were able to save, but also the people who are helping communities rebuild. One of those images shows someone repairing a house.

"You're seeing an influx of contractors from the unflooded areas, and when we approached him, and we started taking his picture I said, 'You don't mind?' And he said, 'You do you're thing, I'll do mine,' " Richie says. "And as we're walking way, he kind of half turned and said, 'Hell of a thing, wasn't it?' And that just was really powerful."

Richie says he hopes this project will inspire photographers elsewhere to do the same when tragedy strikes.

"I think when you're faced with an adversity the size that Louisiana is now, we need everyone to help, and you can help best by doing what you do best," he says. "Everyone has something they're good at, and if we all come together and use our talents, we'll come out of this a lot better."

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.