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In August 2005, Alysia Burton Steele was just two months into her job as a photo editor on The Dallas Morning News when she decided to dispatch the photographer Irwin Thompson to New Orleans to document the impact of Hurricane Katrina. Her newspaper’s bold journalistic work went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2006. In this short interview, Burton Steele describes how her team approached their coverage of the storm and its aftermath, and discusses the telling disparity between how news outlets presented African Americans and white people affected by the tragedy. This video is part of Topic’s Frame by Frame series, in which ‘celebrated photojournalists explore images of the people and events that helped shape the American experience, and discuss how working with photographs impacts them personally’.
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Rituals and celebrations
A whale hunt is an act of prayer for an Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle
8 minutes
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Politics and government
How it looked to Afghan women to see the Taliban return to power
33 minutes
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Biography and memoir
Passed over as the first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight carved out an impressive second act
13 minutes
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The ancient world
The six priestesses who kept the flame of ancient Rome alight at risk of death
5 minutes
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Engineering
A close-up look at electronic paper reveals its exquisite patterns – and limitations
9 minutes
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Architecture
West Africa was once an architectural laboratory. Is it time for a revival?
12 minutes
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Work
A Swedish expat in the Philippines wonders: what’s up with people sleeping at work?
14 minutes
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Art
‘If you’re creative, why can’t you create a solution?’ One artist’s imaginative activism
17 minutes
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The ancient world
An ancient Roman’s hilarious (and perhaps relatable) response to a social snub
2 minutes