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Summary: Tell it All Photojournalism
Review: This is a memoir of a Female Photographer that was assigned to rough places to cover wars of Afghanistan, Swiss' heroin addicts, Rhino hunting in Africa, Romania's revolution, and many more adventure that mostly are experience by male fotographers. With harsh language style of the late 80s generation, Deborah Kogan, tell us her stories with some great photo illustration. Since this is a tell-it-all kind of book, you might find some disturbing truths (like rape, freedom of sex, stabbing, narcotics, bribery) that she encountered to get the right pictures for the readers.
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Summary: an amazing story by an amazing woman
Review: I am not normally into tell-all autobiographies. But I was not able to put this book down and I re-read it time and time again. I think Deborah Kogan is the closest that I have ever found to a role model; it is an amazing account of a life less ordinary, touch, engaging and unapologetic; it takes us through her adventures and misadventures as a female war photographer without being self-pitying, judgemental or pretentious; i am sure many people will judge her on the basis of what she wrote, but they would miss the point.
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Summary: Don't waste your time or money.
Review: Poorly written. By page 34 you have heard about 19 sexual encounters (although without any redeeming detail). Remember the Wilt Chamberlain book or the Geraldo Rivera (Jerry Rivers) book that were basically about putting notches on belts? This book is the same but written with even less skill. I would be much more interested in a book by her husband and how he could possibly want to spend the rest of his life with a woman who had casual sex with the frequency of a bad ham radio. Unless of course many or most of the stories are untrue...
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Summary: A frank, thoughtful and ultimately disturbing memoir
Review: Deborah Copaken Kogan's striking memoir distills all that I find troubling about photojournalism, and vapid and superficial about television news. If Kogan's book were just a wisecracking look at her time in the photo trenches, it would make a fun, if insignificant, read. What sets her book apart is her sometimes painful self-knowledge (she took risks in coverage and relationships that nearly always came back to bite her) as well as her clear-eyed perception that the news business can be as cruel, insensitive and shallow as it can be exhilarating, significant and informative. As someone who has been lucky enough to have been both a professional photographer as well as a newspaper reporter, I appreciate what she is saying. ---Frank Van Riper, photography columnist, <Washingtonpost.com>
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Summary: Me-me-me-me-me!
Review: A banal, superficial book dripping with a wide-eyed yet somehow permanently put-upon narcissism, as well as a hard-to-define bitchiness that isn't redeemed by any realism, humor, compassion (besides self-pity) or genuine reflection. The author seems to feel strongly only about one subject, and that is herself. Insufferable.
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Summary: A modern-day Annie Oakley trading gun for camera
Review: As a child I loved the story of a gun-slinging Annie Oakley simply because it was the tale of an adventurous female spirit who excelled at a sport little girls rarely took interest in if they were even allowed access to it in the first place. For me, Deborah Copaken Kogan was Annie Oakley all over again in that she proved herself adept not only at shooting a camera, but at doing it in what is typically a male-dominated field--photojournalism. While at first I found myself cringing at what I perceived as a never-ending aggrandisement of her sexual exploits, I came to realize how guilty I was of the double standard so prevalent in our society that allows men greater sexual freedom than women. By the end of the book, I felt like giving her a high-five for being so brutally honest about every aspect of her life at that time. One of my first jobs out of college years ago was as a copy girl or "twigger" at National Geographic which put me in the vicinity of many a world-class photographer, most of them men and many of them exactly as she describes. While her experience as a photojournalist was brief it was action-packed, and I think she captures beautifully her experience and presents it in a way that makes putting her book down (in either regard) quite difficult. When my two daughters are old enough, I'll put on Kogan's book on their shelf alongside many other classic tales about strong women.
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Summary: Good Not Great
Review: While I did enjoy Ms. Kogan's descriptions of her adventures, and she writes very well, it was frustrating to have the camera constantly pointing at the author with only the rare glimpse of the people she was supposedly covering.
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Summary: "Aventure" in its true form
Review: The reality of Deborah Kogan's experience would bring far more contingencies than she had ever planned. From being abandoned in Afghanistan by a colleague and lover to having a military commander solicit sex in exchange for his cooperation on a story about wild game poachers, Kogan often found herself in impossible situations with no precedent for dealing with them. Time and time again, Kogan would put herself in harm's way for the sake of a story, to eke out a living in the bloodsport of her chosen profession, while combating the expectations of her gender and simultaneously existing as a sexual being. "Shutterbabe" also includes details about the violence Kogan experienced, not just near the battlefield, but on a day-to-day basis as a woman in modern society. She writes about being kicked unconscious in Harvard Square, date raped as a college student, mugged after leaving a Chinese restaurant and again by a New York cab driver, stabbed by a drug addict in Switzerland and groped by a rabbi.
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Summary: Shutterslut
Review: This is the story of shutterslut. Shutterslut sleeps around a lot. That's how she gets her assignments, and how she gets ahead in her "career". Her four years in the business of photojournalism consist of nailing every photographer she can find, whether they are in a relationship or not. But beware if one of them kisses his actual girlfriend in her presence: then she feels soooo betrayed, (talk about double standards and hypocrisy). If this is feminism, the world can do without it.
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Summary: The soul of a emotionally unavailable man in a woman's body.
Review: I really wanted to like this book, afterall I'm a photographer with no extra cash and I plopped down full price for the hardcover. Yet even with my free spirited tendancies, I have to admit I have a problem with a memoir where most of the chapter headings are named after the author's casual sexual conquests. I know she's trying to be a guy. She admits that freely. Still, she's supposedly a serious photographer yet there are only a handful of pictures in the book, and even those are mediocre. So what's the point? What's the message to other young women trying to find their way with a camera? And how did she make the drastic change from obsessive adventurer to stay-at-home mom? Yes, the book is self-referrential and narcissistic yet there is little believable emotional exploration here. Maybe taking baby portraits will suit her better. Maybe then she will grow a heart and soul and have something important to say.
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