This week in the magazine, Vince Aletti writes about the Jewish Museum’s current exhibition, “The Radical Camera,” a survey of New York’s Photo League, which lasted from 1936 to 1951. The show, Aletti writes, “rounds up vintage prints by the men and women who made the League a magnet for Depression-era idealists and activists and, later, a target for McCarthyism”: Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, Berenice Abbott, Paul Strand, and many more. “Passionately engaged with the city and its poorest citizens, their work is brash, poignant, gritty and often opinionated,” Aletti writes. “It’s also artful, often movingly so, but never at the expense of tough reality.” Here’s a look.
Goings On
What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week, online, in N.Y.C., and beyond. Paid subscribers also receive book picks.
Our Local Correspondents
Why You Can’t Get a Restaurant Reservation
How bots, mercenaries, and table scalpers have turned the restaurant reservation system inside out.
By Adam Iscoe
Profiles
Padma Lakshmi Walks Into a Bar
Since leaving “Top Chef,” Lakshmi has found herself in a period of professional uncertainty. What better time to try standup comedy?
By Helen Rosner
Annals of Gastronomy
A Martini Tour of New York City
My month of vermouth-rinsing and fat-washing.
By Gary Shteyngart
Our Local Correspondents
Donald Trump Is Being Ritually Humiliated in Court
At his criminal trial, the ex-President has to sit there while potential jurors, prosecutors, the judge, witnesses, and even his own lawyers talk about him as a defective, impossible person.
By Eric Lach