I once worked for a newspaper editor who would sometimes refer to Arthur Miller’s quotation about the definition of a good newspaper: a nation talking to itself.
In a “post-truth” world full of shuttered and struggling newspapers, where tyrants brand journalists as enemies of the state, it seems appropriate to examine how viewing a series of documentary photographs about the newspaper industry is like having a much-needed conversation with ourselves.
The act of printing a daily newspaper – and its culminating expression, reading the hard copy version – invites us to hold competing ideas in our mind about fact and fiction, truth and obfuscation, power and privilege.
The series, “Hard Copy,” presents the newspaper industry as an extended metaphor for the human condition, examining our capacity to find meaning, share ideas, and exhibit resiliency in the face of existential crisis.