newyorker:

Aretha Franklin has died, at the age of 76. “Her voice was a pure, painful, and unforgettable expression of American history and American feeling, the collective experience of black Americans and her own life,” David Remnick writes. Photograph by Richard Avedon / © the Richard Avedon Foundation.

Read Remnick’s remembrance of the Queen of Soul. 

Read Remnick’s 2016 Profile of the singer.