A photo on the cover of today's New York Times has left many speechless and sharing their opinions on social after seeing a nipple slip in a photo on the daily newspaper.
The above-the-fold front-page photo, by Israeli photographer Rina Castelnuovo, shows a 28-year-old Israeli woman who discovered a large lump in her left breast last year. She has a tattoo of the Star of David on her left collarbone, a lumpectomy scar, and, yes, a bit of areola. The woman's face is not visible in the photo.
The image's caption (from the print version) describes a "Tel Aviv woman who found a lump in her breast. Cancer-causing gene mutations are common among many Jews in Israel."
After receiving online criticism for the nipple slip, Castelnuovo told New York Magazine that she didn't mean the photo to be provocative.
"It was an unplanned moment," she said. "I was taking the young woman's portrait and we were chatting about her cancer and the scars."
Inclusion of the areola in the shot wasn't intentional, she reassured readers who may have been offended.
"We always weigh the information an image conveys, its relevance to the story, and image quality," assistant managing editor Michele McNally told New York Magazine. "It was scrutinized."
Tom Bodkin, the paper's deputy managing editor and design director, has been at the New York Times since 1980. He defended the photo choice. "The meeting on today's front page, says Bodkin, looked over a number of photographs, including images that were displayed on the inside pages for the piece. There was a "fairly unanimous consensus" around the photo that prevailed, he says, according to The Washington Post.
