Passport: Spring Flowers

Recent highlights and 5 favorite things!

Stranger’s Guide explores how politics, power and culture shape daily life across the globe. We believe that local writers, journalists and thinkers are best equipped to explain their political and cultural realities and we publish stories that ask us to listen to the complexities of the world.

Passport is our monthly letter from the SG team, sharing more about what we’re working on, what we’re enjoying and what’s on our minds. While we share our letter with everyone, we save our recommendations for our paid subscribers who make this work possible.

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As we head into summer, the strangeness of our new world continues to unfold. Oval Office visits give us one window into the changes, as the US president conducts “WWE cage matches” with world leaders who come to the White House. But there’s also a different vantage point from which to examine the transitioning landscape, through the works of writers and photographers around the world. 

Over the last month, Stranger’s Guide has published new works from Syria, Nigeria, Ukraine, South Africa and New Orleans. As the US seeks to disengage from the rest of the world, we are determined to make space that explores new perspectives and embraces cultural complexities. Among the places our work can take you:

• Johannesburg: While the president has championed numerous falsehoods about South Africa, this month we published a photo essay capturing Joburg’s all-female skateboarding crew, as well as Niq Mhlongo’s beautiful, nuanced meditation on his favorite city. 

• Damascus: Syrian-Palestinian Professor Ahmad Diab spent 15 years in exile, unable to visit his family or his home. In his essay “Return to Damascus,” Diab records his return, with videos alongside his reminisces, from his flight from Doha to the singing and dancing in Havana Café and ruminates on what it means to be in exile. 

• Ukraine: Our Ukraine mini-series continued this month, with a look at the Ukrainian DJ who’s also a commander on the front lines, as well as an interview with photographer Misha Friedman, who shot portraits of Ukrainians convicted of collaborating with the Russians. One of his most haunting images, of a man other prisoners had forcibly tattooed, helped lead to change.

Finally, just after our last Passport went out, we got some exciting news: Stranger’s Guide’s Associate Photography Editor Kike Arnal won a National Magazine Award for his photo essay “The New Aztecs.” 

So much great work goes unrecognized, so when a special person gets the spotlight, it’s worth celebrating. Kike has been working with us since we launched in 2018. Our first guide, on Mexico City, included his eerie and captivating photoessay “Chilangoth” exploring CDMX’s underground goth scene. In 2022, he and our editor in chief, Kira Brunner Don, boarded a passenger-cargo boat in in the large city of Belém, where the Amazon pours into the Atlantic Ocean, and rode down the Amazon river, interviewing passengers and capturing portraits of the vast array of people relying on the river as a highway. Kira’s essay “On the Water” and Kike’s accompanying series “River Travelers” was again, very special. We are so proud of Kike—and excited about our future collaborations.

—Stranger’s Guide

This month’s recommendations come from SG intern Conner Dejecacion, Ambia Elias and Abby Rapoport

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The Romance of Butter

Fall in love with butter-maker Jean-Yves Bordier and his poetic ways of talking about his favorite ingredient and his life’s work. “I’m not interested in making 10 million tons of butter,” he says. “I’m a little good man and I make little things.” Bordier’s maison du beurre in Brittany uses the 19th century technique “maxalage,” flattening the butter using a wooden wheel and then working it by hand. Watching the butter be shaped is hypnotic, and Bordier’s lovely discussion of the ways the seasons, the cows and the environment each play a role in making excellent butter. As he says notes, “Pretty things are important in life.”

—Abby Rapoport

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