FEATURING:
RICHARD AVEDON, RUVEN AFANADOR, MARY ELLEN MARK, GILLES PERESS, SYLVIA PLACHY, PLATON, ROBERT POLIDORI, STEVE PYKE, MARTIN SCHOELLER & MAX VADUKUL 

The New Yorker magazine celebrated its 100th Anniversary in February 2025. For almost 70 years, only illustrations were used for articles in the publication. In 1992, when Tina Brown was named Editor-in-Chief, she broke with tradition by introducing photography, immediately naming Richard Avedon as the magazine’s first exclusive staff photographer and subsequently naming Elisabeth Biondi as its first Visuals Editor in 1994, where she remained through 2013. 

During this time, nine additional individuals were named staff photographers for the periodical: Ruven Afanador, Mary Ellen Mark, Gilles Peress, Sylvia Plachy, Platon, Robert Polidori, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller, and Max Vadukul. These ten artists are the subject of this exhibition, highlighting images that showcase their groundbreaking work, which changed the visual nature of the magazine. The selected photos further serve as powerful documentation of major moments in shared political, popular culture, and social experiences of the time. 

In the following years, with the inclusion of the work of exceptional artists who came to shape the visual language of the publication, photography became a vital part of the identity of The New Yorker. Since David Remnick was named Editor-in Chief in 1998, photography has continued to be an integral part of the magazine.

“When The Church invited me to curate an exhibition, it was immediately clear to me that I wanted to use it an opportunity to document my time working at The New Yorker,” said Biondi. “I believe that this was the most important work I’ve done in my career and am thrilled to share the work with my community here, as well as to invite others to explore the extraordinary photographers whose work will be on view.”

Featured here, in addition to Richard Avedon, are works by Martin Schoeller, Mary Ellen Mark, Steve Pyke, Platon, Ruven Afanador, Max Vadukul, Gilles Peress, Sylvia Plachy, Robert Polidori, artists as diverse as the subjects they photographed, each with their own unmistakable vision: Schoeller, with his striking, often hyper-detailed portraits; Mark with her empathetic, humanistic narratives; Pyke with his psychological studies of artists and thinkers; Platon with his iconic vision; Peress with his powerful photo essays, Vadukul with his kinetic, cinematic images, Ruven Afanador’s theatrical yet stark and minimal portraits, Plachy with her poetic eye; and Polidori with his focus on memory and space.

ABOUT ELISABETH BIONDI

Elisabeth Biondi has been an independent curator, teacher and writer since 2011. Before she was the director of photography of The New Yorker for 15 years, Stern Magazine in Germany and Vanity Fair magazine in New York. Her independent curating includes Subjective/Objective and Under the Bridge for the New York Photo Festival, the Steven Kasher Gallery, Beyond Words at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, Ullens Center in Beijing, and REFUGEE at the Annenberg Center for Photography. She was a judge in the eight-episodes Sky Arts ‘Master of Photography’, which aired in 2018/19 and she taught the yearly ‘Photography Master Retreat’ in the South of France. Elisabeth has been a resident of Sag Harbor since 1997.