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Living in DC is tough right now because even if you’re not living or working on the Hill, politics permeates everything. Most of my friends and neighbors are federal employees, career civil servants who love their jobs, who do important work trying to make the world a better, safer, more just place. The conversations are heavy. So this week was mostly spent looking at things that weren’t the news, including a day trip to the National Aquarium in Baltimore, losing myself in films that were inspiring and thoughtful, and catching up on guilty pleasure TV shows like Love is Blind (Minnesota) to decompress and chill out.

Here are 5 other things I was looking at and loving this week:

I watched the Shelby Lee Adams documentary The True Meaning of Pictures, about his work in Appalachia. It did a nice job of addressing the controversy and response Adams' photographs generate, which involves the politics of representation — including hearing from the people in the photographs. If you'd like a primer, Roger May has also written quite a bit about Adams’ work. On a related note: Roger has started his newsletter back up. Give him a follow.

This week, I also watched Trent Parke: The Black Rose, a short film on one of my favorite Australian photographers. In it, I loved learning that he writes down his dreams, which served as a fuzzy outline for his pedestrian light image. He says “Photography is an extension of every thought that I have. It’s almost linked to my hand in a way that it becomes part of you. I don’t think about photography as making something for art or making it for the walls of a show, it’s never about that. It’s always for me just about finding the answers to life. That’s what I’m looking for.” There’s also a brief mention of his brothers, who all also became artists — Tyran is in theater and Grant draws. Once, isolated and lonely in a new city, artist Grant Parke found connection in an unexpected place — drawing "every person on the B10 bus."

I’m also over halfway through the America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders 7-part series on Netflix, and have mixed feelings, but it mostly just makes me sad. I’m glad it didn’t shy away from some of the real issues the women face, including eating disorders, mental health, and ridiculously low pay.

Beautiful film, beautiful message. This short doc follows soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause, who lost everything in a California wildfire.

I loved the stories behind these iconic SNL photos. And this story about the photographer behind every portrait since 1999. A belated Happy 50th, SNL. Thanks for the laughs.