Book Review: Shutterbabe

About two years ago my friend Sarah gave me a book called Shutterbabe. “Read this, you’ll love it,” she urged. I put the book on my “to read” stack, which somewhat resembles the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But like most law students, reading for fun became a dream and my days were instead filled with legal texts.

But, now that I am enjoying these golden days between the bar and starting my job, I picked it up, dusted it off, and sat down to read it. And I devoured it. Shutterbabe is the memoir of Deborah Copaken Kogen, a photojournalist who as a 22 year old jumped into the fray of the Soviet withdraw of Afghanistan, riding around Afghanistan with a group of Shiite mujahideen (yes, freaking crazy!).

The book is amazingly honest and discusses her challenges as a woman in the world of photojournalism, her numerous love affairs, and several brutal attacks she survived (including when she was raped the night before her college graduation). I am always amazed by memoirs like this. A memoir is not good unless it is honest. And being honest requires putting in print all those little moments when you think, “dear god, I am so glad my parents don’t know about this.” So to reconcile those two competing factors, at some point the author must have to come to grips with the idea that not only will her parents know all of her dirty little secrets, but that the entire world will know. Every mistake that we would like to forget, to cover over, to view with rose colored glasses is laid out there for the entire world to learn, to talk about, to judge.

But that is why Shutterbabe is such an exceptional book. Kogen seems to own her past and in recognizing mistakes, isn’t ashamed of them. From the cocaine use to the one night stands, she tells the story of a young girl who threw herself into war zones in search of meaning and adventure. The story of her life takes the reader through her assignments in places like Afghanistan, Romania, Zimbabwe, and even places like heroine dens in Switzerland. It also takes the reader into the morass that is what we modern women call the “work/life balance.”

I highly recommend this book – great summer reading. You get all the tawdry stuff perfect for lazy days at the beach, but the stories are true and the lessons are real.