For example, do you know how you got your film out of a war-torn or third-world country back then? You went to the airport, found a kind-looking person who was flying to your home airport, thrust the film into their hands, and then scampered back to your hostel or embassy or bar to call someone from your photo agency and describe what the person looked like so they could meet them at the airport and get the film. It goes into a lot of fascinating detail about photojournalism just before everything went digital. So it's the story of a life lived fucking fast and frantic, this nimble, inquisitive, often fearless, tiny woman striding manically through the chaos and clamor of the world, clawing desperately to make her mark in it.

Deborah was a photojournalist in the '80s and '90s, covering war in Afghanistan, poachers in Africa, revolution in Moscow, heroin addicts in Zurich, more and more. It's pretty fantastic-a fantastic memoir of a fantastic life. Hooray for journalism! Hooray for old media! Well, I did get my hands on it I ordered it shortly after reading that article. I can't wait to get my hands on this book. Please read the piece, it's a toxic horror and a trenchant howl against the fucking stupid male-philic literary establishment. When my publicist tries to pitch the book to NPR's Terry Gross, a producer tells him that Terry likes the 'Shutter' part of the title but not the 'babe' part. I tell them it's usually my eye behind the camera, not my vagina. The cover that the publisher designs has a naked cartoon torso against a pink background with a camera covering the genitalia. Anything besides a title with the word 'babe' in it.

I beg for Shuttergirl instead, to reclaim at least 'girl,' as Lena Dunham would so expertly do years later. Random House changes the book's title to Shutterbabe, which a friend came up with. The book is sold on the basis of a proposal and a first chapter under the title Newswhore, which is the insult often lobbed at us both externally and from within our own ranks-a way of noting, with a combination of shame and black humor, the vulture-like nature of our livelihood, and a means of reclaiming, as I see it, the word 'whore,' since I want to write about sexual and gender politics as well. I sell my first book to Random House, a memoir of my years as a war photographer, for twice my NBC salary. I would like to submit this as Exhibit A for the failure of traditional publishing to redress issues of sexism, not to mention shooting itself in its stupid foot and being appallingly condescending to one of its strongest demographics.īut I believe this paragraph from the author's incredible (and incredibly enraging) recent piece on the Nation should stand by itself to support my case:

Shutterbabe adventures in love and war