Hello from Vienna!
Guten Morgen meine Freunde
Dear Friends of the Universe,
Your long lost friend Nina here. I write to you from seven stories up in my new apartment with many windows in Vienna, Austria on October 27, 2022. I have moved here for at least the next nine months as Joe is in a masters program. So I will be struggling to learn German and trusting the process.
A few observations thus far:
1. No one in this country J-walks, even if it’s a one way road with absolutely no cars coming, they will wait for the little green man.
2. Sisi the queen of Austria in the 1800’s, has a new Netflix show called ’The Empress’ she also has a lot of deserts named after her. The Austrians are not psyched that most of the actors in the new hit show are German. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/movies/the-empress-corsage-sisi.html)
3. Joe and I moved a desk using the help of the subway and it was the craziest thing people had ever seen in their whole lives, after being in New York last month and seeing a monkey in the subway….I was a bit dumbfounded that they were that surprised.
4. There are a lot of different German dialects here and some people can’t understand each other.
5. Schnitzel is bad I’m sorry.
6. The “coffeeshops” are out of hand and some of them have piano players.
7. Yesterday was Austrian National Day, and the military holds a sort of ‘festival’ to show off all the best weapons of mass destruction for all the children of Austria to enjoy.
Anyways I wanted to update you on some very important work of mine that has been published in the last two months.
1. https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/visuals/richmond-refinery-photos/
I worked on this story during my time as a summer fellow for The San Francisco Chronicle, plus another year more or less. I learned a lot. Making contact with folks who believed their health had negatively been impacted from living near the Chevron refinery was very difficult, in a lot of different ways. I’m proud of my tenacity to complete this story. And you know what, Mayor Butt of Richmond sent us a lot of horrible emails so must mean I struck a cord. Big thank you to Gabrielle Lurie and Bronte Wittpenn for all the behind the scenes help! <3
The New York Times commissioned me to photograph the fog of San Francisco for a Climate story. Sounds exciting right? Then you really think about it. Photographing invisible water vapor that scientists have a tough time predicting for a story about how there is less and less fog days in the Bay Area….yikes. So for the months of May, June, July, I went all out on this one. Learning to eat, sleep, breathe, fog. If the fog was rolling in, I was rolling out, bailing on all previous commitments (sorry friends and fam). Working with writer John Branch on this story was such a delight. He believed in the power of visuals and made me feel like I was apart of the team. Or as we like to call it, the fog squad.
Thanks for checking out my work and following along!!
Until next time, I’ll be trying to figure out freelancing in Europe as an American. I’m holding out hope that it’s possible and here are some photo stories that have been inspiring me:
1. Tamir Kalifa’s Photo story called One Step at a Time: http://www.tamirkalifa.com/one-step-at-a-time
2. Andrea Bruce’s project titled Uranium Nation: http://www.andreabruce.com/uranium-nation/kaz_01/
3. Adam Dean’s photo story titled Overfishing: http://www.adamdean.net/overfishing
4. And finally this amazingly creative way of showcasing a photo story and making it feel very collaborative, by my favorite, Lynsey Addario for TIME Magazine: https://time.com/finding-home/
My hope is to keep working on environmentally focused work and if it doesn’t work out, I always have my dog walking fliers…
This is awesome, Nina! Love the first impressions and little insights into what life in Vienna is like. Excited to keep following!