Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War
by Deborah Copaken Kogan
Random House/Villard

"Swashbuckling" is a word that's fallen out of use, conjuring as it does images of flamboyant pirates and books by Robert Louis Stevenson. Yet it's an apt word to describe the years of Deborah Copaken Kogan's life when, as a recently-graduated naif with an equal passion for sex and photography, she embarked on a career in photojournalism.

At 22, more self-confident than knowledgeable, Kogan traveled to Afghanistan with a handsome, but mentally unstable, French photographer named Pascal to cover the Soviet Army's pullout at the end of the war in that country. Pascal abandoned her there, leaving Kogan to her own resources to arrange passage into the interior, to the Hindu Kush Mountains. Attaching herself to a gang of Afghan guerillas, she lived in caves for a month, watched men blown up by landmines and witnessed children dying of preventable illnesses.

That's just the first chapter — Kogan subsequently tells stories of photographing addicts in Switzerland, the "Rhino War" in Zimbabwe, orphanages in Romania and the failed 1991 coup in Moscow. Throughout, she also tells stories of the men she was attached to at different times — Julian, Doru, Pierre and the man she eventually married, Paul. It's an exciting life, and an exciting book. Divided into three sections, each named after a part of the photo developing process, with each section's chapters named for men she knew, the book's structure reflects Kogan's twin interests and lends itself to a focused and quick pace.

And yet, amid all the open-mouthed awe the book inspires, inevitably questions arise. In her relationships with men, there are occasions where she is beaten, assaulted and verbally abused. As a photographer, she wanders into dangerous situations where she relies a good deal on luck and confidence, and ends up propositioned by unscrupulous bureaucrats or stabbed by junkies. It's hard to know, as the reader, whether you should admire her for refusing to let these experiences prevent her from trusting another man or taking on another assignment — or to question her judgment and what might be considered her inability to learn from past mistakes.

Such a conclusion would be harsh and simplistic. You have the sense in reading the book that Kogan is being thoroughly honest — not just in retelling what happened to her or what she did, but also in elucidating her motives and reactions. Kogan is determined to live her life as fully as she can, without, as she often states, giving in to the strictures and rules society imposes on women in sex and work. Such a determination leads, as she frequently notes, into uncertain situations, but her resolution is never to let that discourage her.

Near the end of "Shutterbabe," when Kogan is a married woman settled in New York City, working at an unfulfilling network television job and hoping for a promotion so that she can ask for that yuppie idyll, flextime, she is just as forthcoming in the details of her life and her motives. That may be what makes this memoir so very different from many other memoirs — Kogan's willingness to lay everything out regardless of how she is perceived by the reader. It is tempting, when telling the story of your life — particularly a recent era of your life — to spin it in a positive way. It is difficult to cultivate the distance necessary to be objective. Somehow, perhaps with the same persistence and fortitude she displays as a young woman, Kogan has achieved that objectivity. The result is a memoir that is engrossing and complex, one that offers a glimpse into what it takes to live an extraordinary life.

— Jessica Chapel (jnc at flakmag dot com)