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    Photographing Every President Since Reagan

    Doug Mills reflects on nearly 40 years of taking photos of presidents.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Through his camera lens, Doug Mills has seen it all: George H.W. Bush playing horseshoes. An emotional Barack Obama. A shirtless Bill Clinton. And he’s shared what he’s seen with the world.Mr. Mills, a veteran photographer, has captured pictures of every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan. His portfolio includes images of intimate conversations, powerful podium moments and scenes now seared into the American consciousness — like the face of President George W. Bush, realizing that America was under attack while he was reading to schoolchildren.Mr. Mills began his photography career at United Press International before joining The Associated Press. Then, in 2002, he was hired at The New York Times, where his latest assignment has been trailing former President Donald J. Trump. In July, Mr. Mills captured the moment a bullet flew past Mr. Trump’s head at a rally in Butler, Pa., and then a photo of Mr. Trump, ear bloodied, raising his fist.Over the past four decades, cameras and other tools have changed the job considerably, he said. While he once used 35mm SLR film cameras (what photographers used for decades), he now travels with multiple Sony mirrorless digital cameras, which are silent and can shoot at least 20 frames per second. He used to lug around portable dark rooms; now he can transmit images to anywhere in the world directly from his camera, via Wi-Fi or an Ethernet cable, in a matter of seconds.But it’s not just the technology that has changed. Campaigns are more image-driven than ever before, he said, thanks to social media, TV ads and coverage that spans multiple platforms. Not to mention, it’s a nonstop, 24-hour news cycle. He likens covering an election year to a monthslong Super Bowl.“It consumes your life, but I love it,” Mr. Mills said. “I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”Mr. Mills, who on election night will be with Mr. Trump at a watch party in Palm Beach, Fla., shared how one image of each president he’s photographed throughout his career came together. — Megan DiTrolioWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    TMZ Criticized for Image Said to Be of Liam Payne, One Direction Singer

    After a torrent of criticism, TMZ removed the image of a body without explanation.TMZ, the Hollywood-obsessed news outlet known for its coverage of celebrities, drew a flood of criticism for publishing an image purporting to show the body of Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer who died in a fatal fall on Wednesday. The site later removed the image.“TMZ is trying to get clicks and ad money off of a young man’s dead body just minutes after the news of his death,” Shayan Sardarizadeh, a journalist at the BBC, wrote in a post on X. “Imagine being a member of Liam Payne’s family and seeing this.”The site initially published a cropped image of a body lying on a wooden deck, saying that it was at a hotel in Buenos Aires, where Mr. Payne died. TMZ said it had identified him from his distinctive tattoos.“We’re not showing the whole body, but you can clearly see his tattoos — a clock on his left forearm, and a scorpion on his abdomen,” text accompanying the photo said, according to screenshots of the article circulating online.In addition to removing the photograph, TMZ also edited the text to remove any reference to showing part of Mr. Payne’s body. Editors did not post a note explaining their decision to amend the story.A spokeswoman for TMZ did not respond to an email and call seeking comment.There are circumstances where publishing images of dead bodies is journalistically defensible, said Kelly McBride, chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute. But such cases are those where the photos call attention to an important story that has a strong public interest element, such as harrowing conditions for migrant children.In those cases, news outlets should be able to explain the decision to take the extraordinary step of publishing sensitive images, she said.“When you don’t have a journalistic purpose, and you find yourself on the receiving end of criticism from your audience, you often are defensive and you have to walk your decisions back,” Ms. McBride said.Sean Elliot, the ethics committee chair for the National Press Photographers Association, said that photo editors should apply reasonable editorial judgment to difficult publishing decisions.“Is this person famous enough, and is their death significant enough that it’s a cultural touchstone?” Mr. Elliot said. “That’s a judgment that only TMZ can make for itself.” More

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    Paul Lowe, Award-Winning British Photojournalist, Dies at 60

    He was killed in a stabbing near Los Angeles, and his 19-year-old son was arrested, the authorities said. Mr. Lowe had earned acclaim for documenting the siege of Sarajevo and other conflicts.Paul Lowe, an award-winning British photojournalist who captured the horror of war during the fall of the former Yugoslavia in a career that spanned decades and continents, was killed in a stabbing near Los Angeles on Saturday. He was 60.The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office filed one count of murder against Mr. Lowe’s son, Emir Abadzic Lowe, 19, for the death, in the San Gabriel Mountains, the county’s Sheriff’s Department said in a statement on Tuesday. The county medical examiner said Mr. Lowe had died from a stab wound in the neck.Mr. Lowe’s work as a photojournalist encompassed several conflicts and major events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Russian invasion of Grozny in Chechnya. His best known photographs emerged out of the siege of Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the longest sieges of a capital city in modern history.In one of Mr. Lowe’s images from Sarajevo, a young girl plays in the street next to a metal tank barrier.Paul Lowe/VII, via ReduxHis son Emir had long struggled with his mental health and was hospitalized on multiple occasions for psychosis over the past year, Amra Abadzic Lowe, Mr. Lowe’s wife of almost 30 years, said in a phone interview on Wednesday.Their son took a trip to the United States that was supposed to last days, but he had not returned after more than two months, she said. Mr. Lowe had traveled to California to try to persuade him to come home with him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Young men on being Republican in New York: ‘It caused all types of consternation among my friends’

    In New York City, Republicans are something of a rarity. Only 10% of New Yorkers are Republicans, according to 2021 voter registration data, and the state is polling bright blue for Kamala Harris. But the Republican party has not called it quits.“You live in a blue city, but it’s going red very, very quickly,” Donald Trump claimed at a Bronx rally in May. Step into the suburbs, and Republican candidates have enough momentum to turn multiple House elections – and ultimately, control of the House – into nail-biters.It’s an interesting time for the New York Young Republicans Club (NYYRC). The club brings together conservative New Yorkers 40 and under to socialize, campaign and discuss policy; recent events have included debate watch parties and a self-defense course in light of “illegal military-age male immigrants flooding our country, the threat of World War III, and New York’s insistence on stripping our Second Amendment rights”. It’s using this momentum in New York to branch out to other Republican youth organizations around the country.This year, the photographer Paola Chapdelaine spent time with four male members of NYYRC and one male member of the nearby Connecticut Young Republicans, who represent a nationwide trend of young men increasingly embracing the right. Here, they explain how they found their way to the Republican party as young men in a liberal city and what they think of political polarization in America.Frank Filocomo, 27: ‘Community cannot be politically monolithic’View image in fullscreenWhen I was an undergrad, I saw a woman on the train with a button on her backpack that said “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. I remember completely disagreeing with that. This move towards dissolving the family, or saying that we don’t need each other and we could just be these totally individualized, autonomous beings with no connection to family, with no connection to our history, I reject that idea. I think we’re all connected to something greater. I guess that’s what makes me a conservative.Recently, I thought I had a great rapport with a date – lots of laughter, great chemistry. Then, the morning of the second date, she [texted]: “Hey, I did some thinking, and never mind. I would not like to go on a date with you.” I immediately knew that she Googled me. I’m not a rightwing vigilante, but I write for conservative publications.If I start immediately in a relationship by saying: “Hi, I’m Frank, I’m a conservative,” then I’m setting myself up for failure. I say: “Hi, I’m Frank, I have a cat that I love. These are my hobbies. I play guitar.” That’s not to say you should be deceptive about your beliefs, but it is to say that you should be cognizant of the political polarization in this country. I think it was Muhammad Ali who said that he judges people based on how they treat waiters at restaurants. Similarly, how do you treat animals? I think squabbling over the tax code, or the right number of immigrants we should have per year, or how you feel about foreign policy ultimately mean nothing to me in a relationship. What I care about is how you treat me and how you treat others.I sound like a hippy, but I also totally believe in this idea of community, and that community cannot be politically monolithic. It has to have Democrats in it, has to have liberals. The second we go to the “me versus them” or “us versus them” mentality, we’re doomed.Born, raised and currently living in Brooklyn, Filocomo is program manager at the conservative non-profit National Review Institute. He serves as policy chairman of NYYRCJude Somefun, 41: ‘My politics caused all types of consternation among my friends’View image in fullscreenIt was 2008 and I was a political free agent. This was when everybody was like, “Obama, Obama, Obama.” He was the hope and change guy. But he was saying stuff like: “These billionaires and millionaires have made too much on American people. It’s time for them to spread the wealth” – like socialists. And I was like: “I can’t vote for this guy.”That’s when I leaned on biblical faith and started researching the political parties. Growing up in New York, most Black people are implicit Democrats or explicit Democrats. My friend Ben, who was a socialist, illustrated to me what it takes to be courageous and not fall into the trend, to express your opinion. I don’t necessarily agree with socialism, I just felt like he was very courageous.I felt like the Republican party was more in alignment with freedom, more in alignment with business, more in alignment with marriage, more in alignment with life in the womb. I was like, “OK, I could get down with that.” It caused all types of consternation amongst my friends, my girlfriend at the time. People were having interventions. My dad kind of renounced me as a son. It was very, very tough.In this election, I believe we should promote the interests of America first. A lot of people are hurting now economically. I don’t see the benefit in sending money over to Ukraine, a bunch of foreign aid, a border that’s open, when we have to take care of our citizens.Somefun is philanthropy chairman of NYYRC. He was born and raised in Harlem and currently lives there. He is a life insurance agentMatthew Carrier, 22: ‘From the outside, I’m a raging conservative, but biodiversity concerns me’View image in fullscreenI got started with the College Republicans my sophomore year. There were four of us, so, like, something had to change. So we made it a very conversation-centric group. Our first topic was the Afghanistan pullout, because that was timely. Veganism was a recent [topic] we did, but the conversation was very good. We had a transgenderism and athletics meeting that was probably our most contentious.The club is College Republicans, there’s no hiding from that, and still, we’ve gotten a very dynamic group of people that are willing to have conversations. We have respect for ourselves. We have respect for the campus, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. It’s something I see where other college Republican groups falter.From the outside, I’m a raging conservative, but biodiversity concerns me [as a farmer]. Still, I don’t share the same concerns [as environmental activists] with GMOs and stuff, because I see there’s a need when you have a world of 8 billion people to feed. I try not to criticize farmers that are at a much larger scale than me by saying: “Just let there be more ladybugs and your crops will be fine.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

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    Republicans are very much a party of clean air, clean water. When you want to talk about global warming and such, that’s where you lose us. I’m much more appreciative of the climate change conversation if folks I’m talking to are willing to rank their issues. That’s a hard thing to do, and maybe a very cold way of thinking. But what’s the biggest issue, carbon in the atmosphere or plastic on the ground? Biodiversity? I think there’s a lot of benefits to nuclear [power], but no one wants to be the guy that stakes a claim to nuclear out of concern that things go bad.Carrier is the former president of College Republicans at University of Rochester and current statewide chairman of the Connecticut Young Republicans, as well as a political consultant and small scale farmer and beekeeper. He is from Enfield, ConnecticutLucian Wintrich, 36: ‘We’re in an economically terrifying situation’View image in fullscreenSo many younger people in New York are conservative, but they’re scared to actually come out and say that they’re conservative. [There’s also] a quarter of the party, and it tends to be these younger, reactionary kids, who will regurgitate whatever certain conservative influencers say, rather than reading and thinking for themselves.I was the only gay guy and the only pro-Bush guy in fourth grade. To me, conservatism is about actual individuality and autonomy and the understanding that the only real authority that we should appreciate and look towards is God, versus the government and elected officials. I mean, I fully believe in community. Most public schools, before the [federal government] took over and established the failing Department of Education, were run by communities. The more you involve the [federal government], the less control communities have, individuals have, and the worse off we are.[In 2024], I think we need to stop funneling all this money to Israel and Ukraine and honestly, every other country that we’re funneling money to. Actually, Israel is a little trickier than Ukraine. I do think it’s a stabilizing country [in the Middle East], but still we’re hemorrhaging money while our debt is going up. We’re in an economically terrifying situation right now.Wintrich lives in New York’s East Village. He is a media strategist and PR consultant and serves as press chairman of NYYRCKwasi Baryeh, 24: ‘It seems like political violence is becoming normalized’View image in fullscreenOne of the biggest problems I see with New York and other cities that lean liberal is that there’s a degradation of property rights. There’s potential for squatters. Tenants have the right to not pay and stay within the property. It’s also landlords abusing their position by not following their legal responsibilities. When people don’t pay rent or don’t abide by their contracts, that’s probably a gateway to people refusing to obey laws, refusing to follow established norms and conventions. It prevents people from living as moral people.I support the party. I support Trump. Trump did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. A couple months ago, I filed my tax return, and I saw I got a little extra money from that. He also [signed a bipartisan bill] funding HBCUs, which my mother, who’s a college professor, was really grateful for. He met with Kanye to see what could be done to remedy the injustice of more Black people being in prison – reducing the incarceration problem. The First Step Act, allowing the formerly incarcerated to re-enter society, was bipartisan, and it was passed. But with the [current] political environment, it doesn’t seem feasible that anyone is going to get much done.[I’m also concerned about the] two recent assassination attempts on Trump. It seems like political violence is becoming more normalized in our society, which makes things much more unstable as things get close to election day.Baryeh is a financial analyst. He lives in the Bronx and is a board member of the NYYRC Catholic caucus

    These interviews have been edited for clarity More

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    What James Ensor Knew About the Masks We Wear

    Seventy-five years after the artist’s death, the grotesque masquerades he painted aren’t so far from the manipulated faces of the present day.In our age of cheek fillers, makeup contouring and Snapchat filters, the face we show the world is often not our own. When it is this simple to manipulate how we look through cosmetics and digital media, have our masks become our selves?As unlikely as it may seem, James Ensor, a Belgian painter born in 1860, may have understood our lust for masking long before these face manipulation tools came along. Ensor painted figures whose real faces are grotesquely covered, and their new guises reveal their ugliest traits. His works offer us a society full of clowns, who know little about themselves.The case for Ensor’s prescience is being made this month in Antwerp, Belgium, where several simultaneous exhibitions are exploring the artist’s fascination with masks and masquerade as part of the 75th anniversary commemorations of Ensor’s death. Although he isn’t an international household name like his contemporaries Claude Monet, Edward Munch or Vincent van Gogh, at home in Belgium, Ensor is revered as a national treasure.Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts, or K.S.M.K.A., which owns the largest collection of Ensor’s paintings, is presenting the lead exhibition of the commemorations, “In Your Wildest Dreams: Ensor Beyond Impressionism,” which runs through Jan. 19, 2025.Herwig Todts, a modern art curator at K.M.S.K.A., said he wanted to show that Ensor was a “game changer,” who used Impressionist brushwork techniques and colors, but then pushed them into new realms of avant-garde expressionism.One of Ensor’s most famous works, his 1890 picture “The Intrigue,” on display at K.S.M.K.A., hovers somewhere between the realistic and the Expressionist: It might be a group-portrait of carnival merrymakers, or a congregation of ghouls.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Kevin Mazur, the Ultimate Celebrity Photographer

    When Taylor Swift opened her Eras Tour in Glendale, Ariz., in March 2023, Kevin Mazur was granted full access to photograph the show.When Beyoncé opened her Renaissance Tour in Stockholm, Sweden, two months later, Mr. Mazur captured the performance from directly in front of the stage.That fall, when Madonna opened her Celebration Tour in London, Mr. Mazur was once again in position for the best shots.At the Met Gala and Vanity Fair’s Oscar party, Mr. Mazur, 63, roams freely while photographers from major news outlets are given a short amount of time to shoot the goings-on away from the red carpet.Bob Dylan has let him into the recording studio, Barbra Streisand has had him in her home, and Kurt Cobain invited him on a Nirvana tour. He took some of the last photographs of Michael Jackson, on the night before his death.His motto — “Why wouldn’t you want to make people look good?” — helps explain how he became the John Singer Sargent of live-action digital photography, a go-to chronicler of rock gods and movie stars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Charles Biasiny-Rivera, Champion of Latino Photography, Dies at 93

    A New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent, he helped start a collective that brought recognition to Hispanic photographers and illuminated life in the city’s barrios.To Charles Biasiny-Rivera, who worked as a street photographer in the barrios of New York City in the early 1970s, his craft was a matter of trust as much as eye.“You really do have to understand that when you enter a neighborhood, the neighborhood sees you as a stranger, because they know everybody, so you don’t want to become noticed,” he said in a 2022 video interview. “So you hang out a little bit,” he added, “smoke some cigarettes, say good morning, good afternoon to people.“If you created a rapport with them,” he said, “they wouldn’t be peering at you all the time. For those peeking from windows, “the shades would go up, the shades would go down.”A photograph by Mr. Biasiny-Rivera taken in 1974 at Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem. (The school closed in 1982.) The image was shown in the 2021 exhibition “En Foco: The New York Puerto Rican Experience, 1973-1974,” at El Museo del Barrio in Manhattan.Charles Biasiny-Rivera/Collection El Museo del Barrio, New York CityAs an aspiring photographer of Puerto Rican descent, Mr. Biasiny-Rivera saw street photography as one of the few paths open to him at a time when the handful of Latino photographers he knew were struggling to make a mark in the field. He spent the rest of his career working to change that.Mr. Biasiny-Rivera died at 93 on Aug. 10 at his home in Olivebridge, N.Y., a hamlet in the Catskill Mountains. His wife, Betty Wilde-Biasiny, said the cause was complications of lung cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More