Age 70

Gilded Age Privacy

Sohini Desai | Smithsonian | 5th July 2024

The debut of the first Kodak camera in 1888 transformed the way that Americans thought about their own image. Suddenly, anyone could be snapped or "Kodaked" anywhere. By 1905, a third of people in the US were amateur photographers. There were no stock photos nor any laws dealing with this, so companies regularly stole the images of private citizens for their advertisements (1,500 words)

The DMZ At 70

Matthew Longo | LARB | 2nd July 2024

The Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea was meant to be temporary. Nobody imagined that the ceasefire line would still be there 70 years on, nor that it would have become a tourist attraction: militarised, yet Instagrammable. It is more than a border. It has a culture and a spirit. "It doesn’t just enforce division but also creates, performs, and maintains it" (2,500 words)