The Yale Daily News reports on a talk by New Yorker visual editor Elizabeth Biondi:

Biondi discussed her passion for aesthetics before an audience of about 45 students and faculty at an Ezra Stiles College Master's Tea on Wednesday. Biondi, who has worked with the New Yorker for nine years, said that even though she is not a photographer or illustrator herself, she enjoys her position as visual editor because it gives her the power to organize images in a text-heavy publication. During the tea, Biondi presented a series of slides and discussed the slow introduction of photography to the New Yorker magazine, which once only featured illustration.
...
The New Yorker does not publish photos that are digitally enhanced, Biondi said.

"Our photography is based on content," Biondi said. "We visualize our stories … Pictures are never arbitrary. They are always based on fact."

Some audience members asked Biondi about how she chooses images to match with essays. Biondi said essays about abstract ideas or concepts are better supplemented with illustrations.

"Not everything lends itself to photography," she said.
...
Sochie Nnaemeka '09 said she was moved by Biondi's presentation [and] was impressed that Biondi has accomplished so much without a formal education in her field.

"It kind of makes you question, what are we doing here?" Nnaemeka said.

Biondi said that while she has worked at a number of different publications ranging from glamour magazines to other literary magazines, she does not intend to leave the New Yorker.

BIONDI: This [by Jean-Marc Bouju of The Associated Press] is the one we pulled out in the end, and that stayed with us. You know, judging is sort of a long process. You look at a lot of things, and then you narrow it down, and eventually you come up, well, hopefully, with a photo that everyone in the jury is excited about and believes in.

And this one really touched us, because, obviously, we looked at a lot pictures from Iraq, and there were a lot of pictures that showed violence, and death and killing. And this one here, it's a father, it's a prisoner of war with his son that he had to be put in a detention camp and put on the hood. And you know, when you look at this, you can imagine what he feels like. He's holding his son, and he's comforting his son, and the military actually allowed him to be with his child, and in the beginning his hands were bound, and now they're unbounded, so there was some humanity on all sides.

But we were all touched how this father cares for his child, and you know, war turns life upside down. More.