Let It Out, Sam!
Lucky is the one who can give their emotions as free a rein as Sam Kerr, star of Australia’s women’s national football team. At the Women’s World Cup – which finally pushed the sport into the spotlight – she sent her Matildas into the quarter-finals with a penalty against France. We asked women who had followed the tournament: they say yes to such outbursts of feeling from sportswomen. Shame on anyone who deems such behaviour the preserve of men alone. A little bit of Sam Kerr would do us all good. Show the world what you feel. Whether you win or lose. The Matildas went out in the semi-final. We’re sure tears of frustration flowed. Exactly so – from the heart.
Beauty in Disaster
Chad Ajamian finds it. The photographer and geography scientist documents natural disasters, supplies data and stages them visually – gladly with an infrared camera. With shots of the March 2021 flood disaster in New South Wales, the Australian freelancer won the then World Press Photo Award in the Open Format category for South-East Asia and Oceania. One can argue over whether it is morally acceptable to win fame and honour from suffering. At any rate it makes more visible the effects extreme weather has on nature, people and infrastructure. And that counts. The picture shows fields flooded by the Hawkesbury River, one of the main rivers of the Sydney region. The water stood this high for six days; for nine days the region could not even be reached by ferry.
Those Were the Days
We have our favourite pictures too. This photo was taken 31 years ago at the 1992 Tour de Suisse. Photographer: Christoph Ruckstuhl. Ruckstuhl started in 1986 at the Keystone press agency – alongside our photo editor Remo Lötscher, no less. At first his job was to glue captions and information onto the paper prints. Manual work that no longer exists in the digital world, Remo Lötscher recalls. The young trainee Ruckstuhl nonetheless blossomed into an ambitious reportage photographer, was taken on permanently in 1991 and for years, until 2022, led the photo team at the NZZ. With this image shot through the spokes of a wheel he won a World Press Photo Award in 1993. He is now in early retirement, but who knows – perhaps he’ll go hunting for shots at the 2024 Road Cycling World Championships in Zurich. Watch this space.
A Dying Breed
Henry Kissinger turned 100 on 27 May 2023. Belated happy birthday, Mr. Secretary of State ret.! A super-ager who has outlasted – and outlived – generations of US presidents and whose composure makes him a model of statesmanlike conduct. Even if he made mistakes, and he did. He doesn’t own up to all of them, which is partly forgivable in a man born in Germany who, as a youth, managed to flee Nazi Germany with his Jewish family. Kissinger has written books that educate. Anyone who wants to read at least one should turn to «World Order». It is a survey of world history that gives an overview of how – in Kissinger’s view – the present distribution of power came about by the mid-2010s. Even as a centenarian he comments on today’s chaos. He is worth reading and worth listening to.
This article appeared in MEN issue 2/23 (November 2023).
