Walking After Midnight

12 photos in the dark, plus new music from suffragette city.

Jan 11, 2024

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including “The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall,“ and the recent “The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” His film “Atomic Cover-up” just debuted on PBS and you can watch here. And “Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried" remains free on the PBS site. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free here:

One week ago I asked you if you might like my idea of launching a new weekly bonus feature here: my photographs organized around a theme or city or what have you. I asked you to weigh in, via comments or email, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. So I am back with a second edition. It’s a natural follow (“After Midnight”) to last week’s (“At Sunset”). You still have time to urge me on or express skepticism, and please do.

I have also promised to include occasional tributes to some of my own favorite photographers. I didn’t expect The New Yorker this week to explore the famous photo of one of the most accomplished and fascinating figures of the past century, Lee Miller (soon to appear on movie screens as portrayed by Kate Winslet) , bathing in Hitler’s bathtub in Berlin shortly after he died, the evening of her return from photographing the Dachau camp. The man who took the picture was her legendary Life magazine colleague David E. Scherman, who happens to be the father of Tony Scherman, a home boy here in Nyack for several decades. Here is The New Yorker article and Tony’s Substack response.

But now a brand new cut from a forthcoming album by Aoife O’Donovan, who broke through a couple of years ago with her fine Age of Apathy album (which we hailed back then). Besides touring with that album she had played Springsteen’s Nebraska in its entirety in dozens of shows in the U.S. and Europe, and you can find it on YouTube. The new album she says was inspired the women’s suffrage movement (see the video) but goes well beyond that. Enjoy. And you can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.