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Deborah Copaken

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Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War Kindle Edition

by Deborah Copaken (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 148 ratings

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The remarkable memoir of an ambitious young photojournalist who went off to war as a twenty-two-year-old girl—and came back, four years and many adventures later, a woman

“Eloquent and well observed, not only about the memoirist, but about the world: war, death, photojournalism and, of course, the worldwide battle between the sexes.” —The Washington Post Book World

In 1988, fresh out of Harvard, Deborah Copaken Kogan moved to Paris with a small backpack, a couple of cameras, the hubris of a superhero, and a strong thirst for danger. She wanted to see what a war would look like when seen from up close. Naïvely, she figured it would be easy to filter death through the prism of her wide-angle lens.

She was dead wrong.

Within weeks of arriving in Paris, after begging to be sent where the action was, Kogan found herself on the back of a truck in Afghanistan, her tiny frame veiled from head to toe, the only woman—and the only journalist—in a convoy of rebel freedom fighters. Kogan had not actually planned on shooting the Afghan war alone. However, the beguiling French photographer she’d entrusted with both her itinerary and her heart turned out to be as dangerously unpredictable as, well, a war.

Kogan found herself running from one corner of the globe to another, each linked to the man she was involved with at the time. From Zimbabwe to Romania, from Russia to Haiti, Kogan takes her readers on a heartbreaking yet surprisingly hilarious journey through a mine-strewn decade, her personal battles against sexism, battery, and even rape blending seamlessly with the historical struggles of war, revolution, and unfathomable abuse it was her job to record.

In the end, what was once adventurous to the girl began to weigh heavily on the woman. Though she had finally been accepted into photojournalism’s macho fraternity, her photographs splashed across the front pages of international newspapers and magazines, Kogan began to feel there was something more she was after. Ultimately, what she discovered in herself was a person—a woman—for whom life, not death, is the one true adventure to be cherished above all.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

To pursue her dream to cover wars as a photojournalist, Kogan moved to Paris upon graduation from Harvard in 1988. Pretty and petite, with a sharp eye for good-looking, virile colleagues who, incidentally, could help her career, she embarked on a series of adventures that she breezily chronicles with a somewhat disingenuous na?vet?. Although her publisher compares her to Christiane Amanpour, readers may find more similarities with Candace Bushnell in these episodic vignettes describing both her far-flung assignments and intimate relationships with colleagues. She traveled with Pascal to Afghanistan and Pierre to Amsterdam; Julian helped her in Zimbabwe, but forbade further intimacies; Doru was with her in Romania. When she met Paul, her husband-to-be, Kogan's commitment to photojournalism waned: she blames her distaste on the wartime horrors she witnessed. Calling photojournalists vultures who feed on other people's misery, she conflates paparazzi with photojournalists, expressing disgust at their role in Princess Diana's fatal accident. Upon her return with Paul to the U.S., she began a new career as assistant producer for NBC's Dateline, which she eventually left to become a full-time mother. Kogan's swiftly paced story easily holds the reader's interest as she moves from her carefree days as an aspiring photojournalist to the responsibilities and dilemmas facing a working mother. First serial rights to Talk magazine in the February issue should boost interest in this sassy debut. First serial to Talk. Agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh at The Writers Shop. (Jan. 25)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Christiane Amanpour meets Melissa Banks! So says the publicist. Actually, Kogan is a top photojournalist who recounts her coverage of the world's hot spots while battling discrimination in the ranks.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Hedonist, thrill-seeker, and collector of men are just a few of the words Kogan pastes on herself in this exhibitionist memoir of her stint in international photojournalism. Born in 1966, and of late married and mothering in Manhattan, Kogan exercised her freedoms when in her early twenties, boldly decamping for Paris to freelance her way into the employ of Gamma, Magnum, or Contact. Thereafter she was hit by shrapnel in Afghanistan, knifed in Switzerland, and beaten by a lover in Pakistan. She ducked gunfire in Moscow, slept with numerous men, and in general led a high-risk lifestyle. She holds nothing back about the awful things done to her, or about her attraction to the social danger zones inhabited by strippers, heroin mainliners, rhino poachers, and guerrillas. With attitude, energy, and edge, she also records the chauvinistic world of photojournalism as she experienced it. Her account will elicit reactions ranging from censoriousness to approbation. But it seems meant to attract attention, as Talk magazine's decision to serialize it attests. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Shutterbabe is the rarest of all memoirs: a book by someone with the courage and passion to live an extraordinary life and the grace and wit to write meaningfully about it."
— Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point

"A wise and unforgettable book, written with courage and love and intelligence and humility and humor by a remarkable woman who, through hard searching and a compassionate heart, has found all the right words with which to tell her extraordinary life."
— John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road

"A riveting account of one woman's journey through the minefields of love and photojournalism."
— Robert Stevens, photo editor, Time

"A candid, sexy, and very funny romp that makes photojournalism seem like an X-treme sport. Deborah Copaken Kogan goes out and wrings enough terrifying heroics from the last bits of the twentieth century to make T. E. Lawrence jealous."
— John Hockenberry, author of Moving Violations

"Not since Margaret Bourke-White has a woman lived in such danger, documented it so fully, and immersed herself so fiercely in the entanglements of love. Here is a mesmerizing, honest, personal drama unfolding right on the edge of political violence."
— Katie Roiphe, author of The Morning After

From the Publisher

Suggested Reading
Anne Frank’s The Diary of Anne Frank was the first book to whack me over the head. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye was the second. As a teenager, I loved Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies. In college, my favorite book was On the Road. If you can find a copy of Robert Frank’s The Americans, I suggest you read Kerouac’s words while flipping through Frank’s pictures.

Other memoirs worth reading, the first of which should be required reading in all schools everywhere: Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz (a.k.a. If This is a Man), Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club, Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life, Anthony Lloyd’s My War Gone By I Miss it So.

My fiction hit list: Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Philip Roth’s The Counterlife, Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.

If you’re looking for good photography books, try anything by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gilles Peress’ Telex Iran, Sebastiao Salgado’s Workers, Diane Arbus’ Diane Arbus: An Aperture Mongraph, Luc Delahaye’s Winterreise, and Jane Evelyn Atwood’s Too Much Time: Women in Prison. These will at least get you started.

Finally, there is no way I would have been able to write this book had I not read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.

From the Inside Flap

Fresh out of college and passionate about photography, Deborah Copaken Kogan moved to Paris in 1988 and began knocking on photo agency doors, begging to be given a photojournalism assignment. Within weeks she was on the back of a truck in Afghanistan, the only woman—and the only journalist—in a convoy of mujahideen, the rebel "freedom fighters" at the time. She had traveled there with a handsome but dangerously unpredictable Frenchman, and the interwoven stories of their relationship and the assignment set the pace for Shutterbabe's six chapters, each covering a different corner of the globe, each linked to a man in Kogan's life at the time.

From Zimbabwe to Romania, from Russia to Haiti, Kogan takes her readers on a heartbreaking yet surprisingly hilarious journey through a mine-strewn decade, seamlessly blending her personal battles—sexism, battery, life-threatening danger—with the historical ones—wars, revolution, unfathomable suffering—it was her job to record.

From the Back Cover

Fresh out of college and passionate about photography, Deborah Copaken Kogan moved to Paris in 1988 and began knocking on photo agency doors, begging to be given a photojournalism assignment. Within weeks she was on the back of a truck in Afghanistan, the only woman--and the only journalist--in a convoy of mujahideen, the rebel "freedom fighters" at the time. She had traveled there with a handsome but dangerously unpredictable Frenchman, and the interwoven stories of their relationship and the assignment set the pace for "Shutterbabe's six chapters, each covering a different corner of the globe, each linked to a man in Kogan's life at the time.
From Zimbabwe to Romania, from Russia to Haiti, Kogan takes her readers on a heartbreaking yet surprisingly hilarious journey through a mine-strewn decade, seamlessly blending her personal battles--sexism, battery, life-threatening danger--with the historical ones--wars, revolution, unfathomable suffering--it was her job to record.

About the Author

Deborah Copaken Kogan is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Shutterbabe, The Red Book, and Between Here and April. A contributing writer at The Atlantic, and she was also a TV writer on Emily in Paris, a performer (The Moth, etc.), and an Emmy Award-winning news producer and photojournalist. Her photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Observer, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Slate, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Paris Match, among other publications. Her column, “When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist,” was adapted for the Modern Love streaming series. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1
Pascal
THERE'S A WAR GOING ON, AND I'M BLEEDING.

An unfortunate situation, to be sure, but considering it's 2 a.m., fresh snow is falling and I'm squished in the back of an old army truck with a band of Afghani freedom fighters who, to avoid being bombed by the Soviet planes circling above, have decided to drive without headlights through the Hindu Kush Mountains over unpaved icy roads laced with land mines, it's also one without obvious remedy. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Ask the driver to pull over for a sec so I can squat behind the nearest snowbank to change my tampon?

I don't think so.

It's February 1989. I am twenty-two years old. My toes are so cold, they're not so much mine anymore as they are tiny miscreants inside my hiking boots, refusing to obey orders. In my lap, hopping atop my thighs as the truck lurches, as my body shivers, sits a sturdy canvas Domke bag filled with Nikons and Kodachrome film, which I'm hoping to use to photograph the pullout of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

Actually, I have no idea how to photograph a Soviet pullout. Though this is my second story as a professional photojournalist, I'm still not clear on what it is photojournalists actually do in a real war.

The first story I covered, the intifadah, was more straightfor-

ward. Organized, even. I'd take the bus early every morning from my youth hostel in Jerusalem to the nearby American Colony Hotel, where all the other journalists were staying (and where I eventually wound up staying when my clothes were stolen from the youth hostel), and I'd go straight to the restaurant off the lobby. There, I'd ingratiate myself with any photographer I could find who had information about the day's planned demos, his own rental car, and a basket of leftover Danish.

After eating, we'd drive around the West Bank and wait for the Palestinian kids to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers, which we knew they would do only once a critical mass of journalists had assembled. Then we'd record the resulting skirmishes onto rolls of color slide film while trying to evade arrest and/or seizure of our exposed films by the soldiers. Next, we'd all rush back to Jerusalem to the Beit Agron, the Israeli press office, where we would lie about what we'd just shot ("religious Jews," we'd say, or "landscapes,") and get our government-issued shipping forms stamped and signed accordingly. Finally, we'd head to the strange little cargo office at the airport in Tel Aviv to send our film on a plane back to our photo agencies in Paris. Simple.

But here in Afghanistan the situation is more obscure. I'm alone, for one, which among other things means I have no one to help me figure out basic puzzles like how to get my exposed film out of the mountains. Or how to write captions when no one around me speaks English, and I have no idea where, exactly, these photos are being taken or what it is I'm actually seeing. I'm just assuming that at some point, someplace, I will see some dead or bloody mujahed, or some dead or bloody Russian soldier, or some mujahed firing off his Kalashnikovs, or one of those great big Soviet tanks whose names I can never remember, or, well, something that looks vaguely warlike that I can shoot and send-again, it's murky to me exactly how-back to my photo agency in Paris.

I look over at Hashim, who's rearranging blankets, knapsacks and boxes of ammunition to clear more leg room on the crowded truck bed. He yanks my maroon nylon backpack from the center of the pile, fills in the newly empty space with a green metal box, mimes "Can I sit on this?" while pointing at my backpack, and, when I nod yes, he wedges it into a corner and plops his 180-pound rump right on top of it. A gentle crunching sound ensues, followed almost immediately by the smell of rubbing alcohol. Shit. My mind races to try to recall what else, besides the bottle of alcohol, I packed in that outside zippered pocket.

Then I remember. My box of Tampax. My one and only box of Tampax.

Well, now. I'm fucked.

Oblivious, Hashim slowly inhales a Winston cigarette and kneads his amber worry beads through his ragged fingers. Trained as a journalist, he's the one Afghani among my forty-seven escorts who actually speaks a few key English phrases such as "Food soon," "Danger, stay in cave," and "Toilet time, Miss Deborah?" But even though I know he will probably understand me if I say, "Please get off my bag," he definitely won't understand "because my tampons are exploding." And because "Please get off my bag" sounds sort of rude, and because the squishy backpack does look like a comfy place to sit while all of us are scrunched together on the back of this rickety old truck heading God knows where, and because my hygiene woes do not hold a candle to the miseries of jihad, I say nothing. Besides, I'm covered from head to toe in an electric-blue burka-an Islamic veil, worn like a Halloween ghost costume-which tends to hinder communication. Not only does it muffle my speech, it makes it impossible to guess, for example, that underneath all this rayon, under my shiny blue ghost costume, I cannot stop crying.

What on earth possessed me to come here?

In a word, Pascal. It's Pascal's fault I'm here all alone, and when I get back to Pakistan I'm going to kill him.

THE FIRST TIME I noticed Pascal it was from afar, at a café on the rue Lauriston near the Sygma photo agency. That would have been in late September 1988, about two weeks after I'd arrived in Paris, ready to start my life. Every day, I'd go to that same café and spy on the photojournalists eating lunch there. Most afternoons, I'd order a croque monsieur and place my

portfolio ever so casually on the chair in front of me, hoping that the sight of my work along with the Leica around my neck would somehow draw a photographer over to my table. In my fantasy, the photographer would ask to take a look at the pictures and then, duly impressed, he'd invite me to come join the rest of his gang at his table for an île flottante and a round of espressos. I'd sit down and, after modestly refusing to do so, I'd be persuaded by the other men-they were all men-to pass my portfolio around the group, one of whom would be an important photo editor who'd want to send me that very same afternoon to go cover a war. It didn't really matter which war because I knew better than to be picky. Any war would do.

But that was just the fantasy. In reality, I had to settle for eating my sandwiches alone and in silence.

On that first day I noticed Pascal, he strode like a bulldozer into the café, pushing in the cool autumn air from the outside with his angular torso. With what seemed like a single fluid motion, he unhitched the camera bag from his shoulder, placed it in the pile of sacks already there on the banquette, greeted his colleagues with an ironic "Salut, les potes!," pulled off his blue cashmere crew neck, knotted it around his shoulders, lit a cigarette and sat down to fondle a menu. His features were sharp and finely chiseled, his eyes sparkled with what appeared to be a touch of mild insanity, and his lips had corners that turned up when he smiled, like the Joker's in Batman. When his steak au poivre arrived, he sliced into it with the grace of an aristocrat, the tines of his fork facing down then up as one by one the freshly cut morsels disappeared into his mouth, each effortless bite punctuating the rhythm of his fraternal chatter. He is magnificent, I thought.

Pascal was an up-and-coming war photographer, and I admired his work. His pictures didn't just show action, they screamed action. Bombs exploding, young children crying, soldiers cowering, grimacing, dying. Exactly the kind of images that I was desperate to start shooting, if only I could figure out how.

After two weeks of getting nowhere with my portfolio-on-the-chair ploy and spending far too many francs on croque monsieurs, I realized I'd been going about it all wrong. With my shaky French, I called the general number for Sygma and asked to speak to Claude, the editor in charge of news photos. For whatever reason, perhaps because he couldn't understand me on the telephone, perhaps because it was a slow news day, he agreed to a meeting. The next afternoon, when I arrived at his desk, he started to laugh. "You're the little girl from the café," he said. A few of the photographers I'd been stalking, Pascal included, stared and tittered from behind the glass wall of the photographers' room.

As Claude flipped through my portfolio, which was bulging with photographs of strip clubs and the men who visit them, his eyes opened wider and he began to shake his head. Then he muttered "Putain!" I knew putain meant "whore," but at the time I did not know it could also be used idiomatically to mean something more tame, like "wow" or "holy cow." But before I could figure out where the epithet had been directed, at the strippers or at me, Claude looked up and said, "Tu voudrais aller où?"-

"Where would you like to go?"

I cocked my head. I crossed my arms. "Israel," I said, more of a dare than a word.

Claude smiled and, to my amazement, replied, "Fine." We made a deal: I'd pay for the trip; Sygma would pay for my film and development costs and then distribute the pictures upon my return. A break. At last.

As I turned to leave, Pascal caught my eye and winked. Whenever I thought about that wink afterwards, I'd shiver.

The next time I saw Pascal, it was two months later. I'd just arrived back from Jerusalem. Chip, my colleague and occasional lover, an American who'd lived in Paris for most of his adult life, invited me as his date to a dinner party Pascal was throwing with his live-in girlfriend in Paris. The live-in girlfriend part should have tipped me off, but then Pascal cornered me in the living room and challenged me, with his mischievous smirk, to a staring contest. No problem, I thought. I'll beat him hands down. But after what must have been less than sixty seconds of locking eyes with the man, I didn't just lose. I was hypnotized, rendered incapable of higher thought. Or even medium thought, like "Stay away. Girlfriend shares his bed."

Within minutes of losing the staring contest, and battling an overwhelming urge to sniff Pascal's neck, I cooked up a plan. It was a simple plan, really. One that would solve what I was beginning to understand would be a constant dilemma: companionship on the road. With our cameras in hand, we'd leave Paris, our worldly possessions, the live-in girlfriend, and my less sexy lovers behind. We'd spend the next couple of years traversing the planet, bouncing from coup to insurrection, war to revolution, passing our days shooting pictures and our nights under the stars, making love to the gentle thrum of incoming mortar fire.

Afterwards . . . well, I wasn't exactly sure. I didn't think in afterwards.

Okay, so I had an active fantasy life, but this time I could smell the thoughts as they popped into my head. Or maybe it was just the big slabs of steak that Élodie, the live-in girlfriend, was preparing in the kitchen. In any case, while Elodie was off in the kitchen preparing the meat, while Chip was embroiled in another conversation, Pascal suddenly turned to me, blew a puff of his cigarette into my face, and said, "I'm going to Afghanistan next week. Why don't you come with me?"

I sucked on my own cigarette, choked on it really, and blew the smoke back into his face. Then, composing myself, I shot him a conspiratorial smile. "Sure," I said. "Let's do it."

It was as simple, and as complicated, as that.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000FC1KF2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Villard (March 10, 2001)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 10, 2001
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3751 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0375758682

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Deborah Copaken

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DEBORAH COPAKEN is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Shutterbabe, The Red Book, and Between Here and April. A contributing writer at The Atlantic, she was also a TV writer on "Emily in Paris," performer (The Moth, etc.), and a former Emmy Award-winning news producer and photojournalist. Her photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Observer, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Slate, O, the Oprah Magazine, and Paris Match, among others. Her column, “When Cupid is a Prying Journalist,” was adapted for the Modern Love streaming series. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

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spumaphoto

A love poem

Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2012

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Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War
Having read a good portion of the reviews listed, I am left pondering whether I read the same book, Shutterbabe, and whether another review would be helpful. I must because DC Kogan has, as an artist, provided me with very much needed insight into my marriage of 18 years, and a fellow photographer, Christian, demanded that I post it so that he might read it.
I first heard of this book by the late Bill Jay in his column in LensWork magazine (Jan-Feb 2005 (56), p.84) . He highly recommended it, so I put it on my reading list, but never got around to actually procuring a copy. I think I was put off by the title. When I finally did so, the book agitated me to a point of insomnia and hyperactivity. An effect that Kierkegaard described and its therapy prescribed: stop everything until one sorts it out.

Kogan is a highly intelligent and artistic woman. Her provenance is impressive: trained by Christopher James (see The book of alternative photographic processes 2nd ed, 2009; p.218) and mentored by Gilles Peress (he of Magnum fame). In her junior year at Harvard, she begins what is considered today traditional photography (film: developed, stop bathed, and fixed [by which she delineates the broad sections of her book]). Before graduating she makes portraits of boorish and offensive men who accost her with sexually-charged propositions ("Shooting back") and of ecdysiasts in a local strip club. She recognizes her camera as both a weapon and ticket for entry. As Helmut Newton suggests, a photographer who does not admit that he is a voyeur is a liar. But Kogan is more than this; she is an anthropologist trying to figure out the male gender (being the elder of four sisters) and a philosopher engaged in both epistemology and the pursuit of "ontological rootedness," to quote Simon May (Love: a history, 2011; p.6) in order "to find a home for our life and being." She is also a performance artist and her experiences make up this book which she categorizes as a "love poem" to her husband, Paul Kogan. To understand this book, I believe one must start here: a love poem, not a self-aggrandizing autobiography, as some of her harshest critics suggest.

In her nascent sexuality, she discovers that men live in a different world and are motivated by different goals. This greatest of mysteries inspires repeated and ardent study. She learns, early on, that they speak the language of physical sexuality--in utero, a baby boy receives a jolt of testosterone that changes the verbal center of his brain for life. As the reader will learn that she is a polyglot, it should not surprise that she attempts to learn this language as well. But, there are dangerous misunderstandings and missteps--this can never be her mother tongue (see "Aidan" who rapes her and "Gabe" ["hero of God"] who fathers a child that she aborts but whom he wanted. She loved Gabe and also "Matthew" ["gift of God"], the latter scorning her for a woman approved of by his family [this is also a foreshadowing of the husband she is yet to meet]).

She enters into the world of men, as the majority of photojournalists, at least at the beginning of the end of the 20th century, are male. She states that women are cursed and in a surprising show of defiance demands that the Afghan mujahideen make her into a man. They do, at least on the outside, but her catamenia continues, of course, preventing successful deception.

So too do the men who take advantage of her stature (5 feet two inches and a svelte 108 pounds) and unfortunate decisions. There is "Pascal" ["Easter child"] who beats her and "Sean" ["God is gracious"] who is a sadist. The next man she meets is the concierge of the hotel where "Sean" is staying. He is a self-righteous prick who offers her no comfort, in a time of great distress, even if, at least partly, her own doing. He and another unnamed man throw her out. As Sherlock Holmes observes in the Sign of Four, "while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty." n2-n+2=x, so simple, yet so complicated with an infinite number of variables, as she recognizes and yet, a "mathematical certainty."

Her travels to disparate corners of the world, and their assigned time zones, leave her in a vertiginous state of homelessness and jet lag. Her life, like this, is not going to assist her in developing an "ontological rootedness."

It was at this point that I had to deal with my own angst where words (both nouns and verbs) were failing me. Kogan is about three years younger than I am and while she was traveling around the world, I was working as an intern and resident in internal medicine. At one point, there was an obit page where half the names were all my patients who had succumbed despite intensive care (my care!) and a botched bone marrow biopsy that I endured without any anesthetic, as a research guinea pig. And many a failed relationship. The juiciest gossip about me surrounded an off the cuff comment from a fellow resident who questioned if I had slept on top; this was not an observation of sexual activity but rather of our sleeping arrangements as the call room contained a bunk bed and I gave her the bottom bunk, as she is short, but not much shorter than I.

Shortly thereafter, I moved to another town and after an inauspicious introduction, met the woman who would become my wife. The marriage almost did not occur. The issues surrounded a deceit eventually disclosed and an obtuse inability to tell me her plans for a career. The small yet bitter seed of discontent was to be nurtured. Why had my wife married me? Why does DC Kogan marry Paul ["small or humble"]. For Kogan, the performance art, or experiment, is coming to an end. She has seen the good, or partial good, in some men, Doru and also "Ray" ["protecting hands"] who carried her into his tent, not for sexual gratification but for her comfort while Africa rained. She found him mostly wet the next morning. I was never a "Sean" but I sure could be a self-righteous prick. Now tell me, which is worse?

It is when she meets Paul that she finds the right one at the right time at the right place doing the right thing. She has her "ontological rootedness" and this performance is over ("Shutterbabe is dying"). I believe that she writes this book as a testimony to the completion of her overarching work: she has indeed found her "love and her savior" in her husband, as she testifies in the last line of the book (read the acknowledgments--it even helps sort out which names have been changed; nothing like having a baby and exploring the meanings of names to guide one in choosing names for names that must be changed, unless I read too much into it-and I probably have).

I would trust that most, either men or women, would not be compelled to explore these questions to such an extreme and then present the findings in such a trenchant and comprehensive oeuvre. And as an infectious diseases physician who treats sexually transmitted diseases on a weekly basis, I can hardly condone her approach and technique (but was heartened to learn she escaped unscathed from an HIV scare and understands the importance of the condom for safety; of course an interval of six months, and not two years, is all that is necessary for HIV testing in her described situation. I trust too that she has been tested for Hepatitis C given her history of the use of cocaine). But I would offer my gratitude to this author who has helped me to understand in a profound way how my own woman views me: her love and savior; I conclude that the reticence of my wife was less deceit and more incomprehension--why keep working on the equation when the solution has been found after all? To be able to untie this Gordian knot after 18 years is joyous. Q.E.D.

DC Kogan shares her life with us and in so doing provides a definition for true love, from the perspective of a woman to her man, in an utterly convincing (as a philosophical argument) and elegant (as art) way. This is a book that describes a small time frame of great upheaval with expected suffering and unexpected commiseration, some of the issues that photojournalists faced prior to the ability to upload their images, and the life and events of one woman. But, it is, ultimately, a love poem, derived from her performance art, and so should be broadly appealing, especially given the quality of this work. Highly recommended, especially for men--perhaps a month before their anniversary--that they might truly appreciate the effort and decisions a woman must make to achieve "ontological rootedness" with a man.

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Grant

Solid first work

Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2013

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I appreciated the honesty of Deborah Copagen Kogans biography of her early work as a photo journalist and her candor in describing her life and loves along the way. She seems to have a strong idea about who she is and takes the negative experiences in her life and unlike so many of us she learns and grows from them. I heard her interviewed on NPR about her latest book when she reference this book which led me to purchase it. Her views on how women are viewed in a male dominated field like war correspondence and photography echoed themes I had just read in Cheryl Sandberg's book Lean In. More people need to expose themselves as honestly as Deborah has here. I found it courageous.

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Jennifer Koskinen

Strong women inspire me deeply!

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2022

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I assumed I'd relate to this book as a woman photographer (that's why I picked it up). What surprised me was the discovery of a familiar voice, shared views about the world, men, relationships, growth, independence, feminism, and most of all the challenges society places on women who ultimately want to become mothers and work.

I was on the edge of my seat reading her accounts of front-line adventures in photojournalism from events all around the world (many such events I remember watching unfold in real time and it was amazing to read her insider perspective). I can't imagine being brave enough to pursue that particular line of photographic work (she has a line about the 'varieties of human animal' that made me laugh, myself being of the variety who'd rather have patience to sit for days waiting to photograph a passing lion). Despite being an entirely different variety of human/photographer, I found these stories intimately, infinitely relatable as a woman who has walked a not so "normal" life. And I loved how each story was framed within a chapter named for a man she related to in some way at that time. Such an interesting juxtaposition of independence and reliance on other humans.

Great writing, pacing, perspective and story-telling. Finished last night and went out today to pick up Ladyparts. Thank you, Deb, for sharing your stories!

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Jade Spade

Do not miss this one!

Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2022

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Amazing, well-written memoir. One of my favorites!

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blubberella

Too Much Ego

Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2013

I wanted to like this book much more than I did. I found the author talked about herself in a way that felt ego-centric and alienating. Her story was interesting : the adversity of being a young, petite female photographer in an industry dominated by men, the horrible sexism, fighting to be taken seriously and the risks to get a saleable photo she experienced were appalling. I never felt like I ever had a sense about the photography she loved, or how she learned to take good photos, however.

I did feel like I had an earful of bragging about what a smart and talented child she was, the infinite number of attractions and romances she experienced, and it just wore thin really quickly for me. I also hated the way she referred to herself as "Shutterbabe" like this was a third person superhero.

The story was interesting and sometimes shocking, the telling of it was less so.

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K. S. McCall

Shutterbabe:

Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2009

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This is an intriguing look into the life of a professional photographer who went everywhere from the caves of Afghanistan with the mujaheddin to the Red Square of Moscow when a coup attempted to oust Gorbachev. Her stories are as captivating as her photographs.

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