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Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War
300 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2000
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March 18, 2024
I had just read "Ladyparts" and thought "Maybe I should explore her other writing." I loathed this book, and I loathed the vain, spoiled woman. She downplays her upbringing, but she was raised not middle class, as she proclaims, but in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the Washington, D.C. area. She was given everything, including her first expensive camera, and she went to good schools. She received a lot of parental attention and support.
As a literary theme, "adventures in love and war" is a timeless subject, allowing infinite variations, fascinating nexus of extremes in human relations, and life's game of chance. This book does not belong in that genre. She seems to play to her advantage her size (small) and how cute her butt and breasts are (according to other men,) and how gutsy and brave she is (hardly.) Self-absorbed claptrap.
As a young girl just out of college, she was expected at first to know little about the places she planned to visit. But it almost seems she makes a point of deliberately staying clueless throughout her travels. In Zimbabwe, where she went specifically to see elephant poachers being hunted down by special military squads, she find herself totally unprepared in the middle of nowhere, until being rescued by Australian soldiers. May be if she wasn't so busy sleeping with other women's boyfriends, she could at least learn something about the regional geography and what to put in her backpack. Her version of feminism, expounded at length throughout the book, sounds more like a trivial egotism rather than a principled position. She expects as a given support, comfort and sex from men she encounters when she needs it, but is never too long to resort to petulant tirades in the "male chauvinist pigs" fashion whenever things turn out not exactly to her liking.
Deborah Copaken Cogan describes her brief - less than four years - career as a photojournalist in miscellaneous messy spots around the globe. She did even study a map before she left--let along pack one? She makes herself a nuisance to her hosts because of their strict privacy customs, resulting in one rebel soldier getting his legs blown off by a mine when checking a pathway for her so she could go pee off the road.
One of the persistent impressions throughout the book is how little empathy she feels towards the objects she seeks with her camera. Her only human interest is some thrills for herself and another photo opportunity for her career. In Zimbabwe the author finally got her lens on a freshly killed (almost by her request) poacher - an unlucky fellow probably just trying to feed his family, and now left to rot in the jungles. In her own words she "descended on him like a vulture" for the best photo shot. When finding herself in one of the Romania's worst orphanages, for the most crippled and deformed children, she descends into shrilly hysterics - not because she feels anything for these kids, but because hideous surroundings offend her aesthetic comfort. "It doesn't smell good here."
Later, in Moscow, in the midst of the August 1991 coup the author encounters a crowd of protesters carrying anti-coup slogans, written in Russian. She then seriously advises the carrier of one banner to rewrite the slogan in English instead - otherwise what's the point of the whole thing if cameras of western reporters would not be attracted to some familiar words. Is she for real? From somebody who has been around the world, one could expect a bit more sophistication than this uniquely American form of solipsism - that things aren't happening unless they are on CNN. Not from this girl - throughout the book she seems to make a point of firmly sticking to the flattest of media stereotypes.
She picks up men and discards them, yet seems upset when they do the same to her. I know I won't bother reading anything else she has written, or will be writing. Small? Little monsters.
As a literary theme, "adventures in love and war" is a timeless subject, allowing infinite variations, fascinating nexus of extremes in human relations, and life's game of chance. This book does not belong in that genre. She seems to play to her advantage her size (small) and how cute her butt and breasts are (according to other men,) and how gutsy and brave she is (hardly.) Self-absorbed claptrap.
As a young girl just out of college, she was expected at first to know little about the places she planned to visit. But it almost seems she makes a point of deliberately staying clueless throughout her travels. In Zimbabwe, where she went specifically to see elephant poachers being hunted down by special military squads, she find herself totally unprepared in the middle of nowhere, until being rescued by Australian soldiers. May be if she wasn't so busy sleeping with other women's boyfriends, she could at least learn something about the regional geography and what to put in her backpack. Her version of feminism, expounded at length throughout the book, sounds more like a trivial egotism rather than a principled position. She expects as a given support, comfort and sex from men she encounters when she needs it, but is never too long to resort to petulant tirades in the "male chauvinist pigs" fashion whenever things turn out not exactly to her liking.
Deborah Copaken Cogan describes her brief - less than four years - career as a photojournalist in miscellaneous messy spots around the globe. She did even study a map before she left--let along pack one? She makes herself a nuisance to her hosts because of their strict privacy customs, resulting in one rebel soldier getting his legs blown off by a mine when checking a pathway for her so she could go pee off the road.
One of the persistent impressions throughout the book is how little empathy she feels towards the objects she seeks with her camera. Her only human interest is some thrills for herself and another photo opportunity for her career. In Zimbabwe the author finally got her lens on a freshly killed (almost by her request) poacher - an unlucky fellow probably just trying to feed his family, and now left to rot in the jungles. In her own words she "descended on him like a vulture" for the best photo shot. When finding herself in one of the Romania's worst orphanages, for the most crippled and deformed children, she descends into shrilly hysterics - not because she feels anything for these kids, but because hideous surroundings offend her aesthetic comfort. "It doesn't smell good here."
Later, in Moscow, in the midst of the August 1991 coup the author encounters a crowd of protesters carrying anti-coup slogans, written in Russian. She then seriously advises the carrier of one banner to rewrite the slogan in English instead - otherwise what's the point of the whole thing if cameras of western reporters would not be attracted to some familiar words. Is she for real? From somebody who has been around the world, one could expect a bit more sophistication than this uniquely American form of solipsism - that things aren't happening unless they are on CNN. Not from this girl - throughout the book she seems to make a point of firmly sticking to the flattest of media stereotypes.
She picks up men and discards them, yet seems upset when they do the same to her. I know I won't bother reading anything else she has written, or will be writing. Small? Little monsters.
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