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CAPTURING THE JOY OF A LAKE

Saturday, July 3, 2021

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ZSÓFIA PÁLYI

By Whitney Johnson, Director of Visual and Immersive Experiences

“The place seems to not have changed much,” National Geographic photo editor Julie Hau tells me, when asked about the pictures you’re seeing in this newsletter.

Like photographer Zsófia Pályi, who spent summers at Lake Balaton in western Hungary, Julie also visited as a kid. It was “such an adventure,” Julie recalls of the massive lake inside a landlocked country.

For others, writes Dan Stone in our summery magazine story, Lake Balaton was a respite: From the 1960s to ’80s, German families separated by the Berlin Wall reunited on its shores for vacation. (Pictured above, a boy frolicking in the shallows.)

But for me? These images just exude the bright colors and carefree spirit of summer, enhanced by the cyan waters of central Europe’s biggest lake.

Floating and posing: In the portraits above, Zsófia Pályi caught everyone in the water—and employed a few photographic tricks.

“Pályi always points her camera north to the horizon, and with only water in the background, the shore looks like a Hungarian impossibility: a beach beside an ocean,” writes Stone. She also uses a 1950s-era Hasselblad 500 camera and film to create the vintage Cold War aesthetic.

Julie’s takeaway of the photographs, I detect, carries a hint of nostalgia: “In her portraits,” Julie said of Zsófia Pályi, “she captured the whimsical atmosphere” of the place.

Even the paddleboards look vintage: UNESCO is considering designating part of Balaton’s north shore a World Heritage site. The coast features include volcanic rock formations, Celtic stone sculptures, and historic castles.

Capturing the aesthetic: A swimmer with compatibly colored hair comes up for air. On the lake’s bottom lie remnants from the past century: several World War II-era planes and other wartime rubble.

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TODAY IN A MINUTE

'This photo captures how we feel': An image of an exhausted firefighter in California’s Big Sur has become a symbol of what threatens to be another devastating wildfire season in the American West. Justin Grunewald was fighting the Big Willow fire, and the Los Padres National Forest sent a photo of him onto social media. This image, showing his face and clothing covered in ash, went viral, SFgate.com reported.

Photographer as accomplice? That’s how designer Christine Phung described the role in an interview with WWD. Let her explain: “Photography—especially these candid shots away from the runway—is the only medium that doesn’t betray clothing. Photographs capture how the clothes become embodied when worn by those who model them.”

Surrealist stillness: That’s how one outlet describes Dia Mrad’s exhibition of photographs of Beirut before and after a massive explosion in the summer of 2020. “The urgency to save Beirut’s heritage was always there for me,” the architecture-trained photographer says,” but it was beyond my wildest imagination that all this destruction would happen in one second.” See her images on the architecture and design site Wallpaper.

Related: ‘How do I write about what they did to you, Beirut?’

INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY @DINA_LITOVSKY

More lively: In the past few weeks, Manhattan has been slowly coming alive again. In the image above, Dina Litovsky captures the movement on this sunny street corner of Union Square. Ahead of the emergence of the highly infectious Delta variant of COVID-19, most mask mandates had been removed. New York state says more than 70 percent of adults have had at least one dose of a COVID vaccine.

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY GRETA RYBUS

One way to take better pictures: Think like a landscape painter. Seek the horizon, read the light, and understand subtle variations in weather, painter Timothy Wilson tells Nat Geo. “I become enmeshed. It feels wonderful,” says Wilson (pictured above), who sets up his easel on cliffs, islands, in marshes and bogs—even the seat of his kayak.

GET PERSPECTIVE

IN A FEW WORDS

QUOTE

Lingering and contemplating is something we have to train ourselves to do.

Painter

From: What photographers could learn from landscape painters

DID A FRIEND FORWARD THIS TO YOU?

On Monday, Debra Adams Simmons covers the latest in history. If you don't get the daily newsletter, sign up here for Craig Welch on the environment, Victoria Jaggard on science, George Stone on travel, Rachael Bale on animal and wildlife news, and Rachel Buchholz on families and kids.

THE LAST GLIMPSE

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY ANASTASIA TAYLOR-LIND

How do your raise a war photographer? For Anastasia Taylor-Lind, home for a chunk of her childhood was the road. For years, her hippie parents carried the young Anastasia (pictured above with her father) throughout the byways of southern England in a wagon that was pulled by two horses, Star and Blue. When Anastasia later said she wanted to become a war photographer, “my dad was very supportive,” she writes in the August issue of National Geographic. “He thought it would be a great way to live my life.”

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Taylor-Lind’s work. Learn more about the Society’s support at natgeo.com/impact.

This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard and Monica Williams, and Jen Tse selected the photographs. Amanda Williams-Bryant, Rita Spinks, Alec Egamov, Heather Kim, and Jeremy Brandt-Vorel also contributed this week. Have an idea, a link, a story about a cat therapist? We’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for reading!

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