PJL: November 2013 (Part 1)

Features and Essays

Pete Muller: Congo’s Battle Against Rebels (NYT) More work on the Lens blog here

Brian Sokol: One Family’s Journey to Safety in the Congo (Newsweek)

Brent Stirton: Saving Congo’s Gorillas: A Refuge for Species Under Threat (LightBox)

Zed Nelson: The New Nation Makers of South Sudan (Lens Culture) The new power-brokers of South Sudan – the former rebel soldiers, government advisers, ministers, bureaucrats, adventurers, entrepreneurs and international aid workers who have descended on this fledgling nation

Jason Larkin: After The Mines (Panos Pictures) Legacy of Johannesburg’s mining industry and its effects on the city’s urban environment | Also on Photo Booth here

Manu Brabo: Zaatari Camp (AP Big Story) Largest camp for Syrian refugees becoming a city

David Guttenfelder: North Korea in Widescreen (National Geographic) Panoramas of life and landscapes in North Korea

Gilles Sabrie: Small Part, Big Screen (China File) Audio slideshow | A Beijing migrant tries to break into the movies

David Leventi: Life and Death in Varanasi (LightBox) India | Portraits from the banks of a sacred river

Munef Wasif: In God We Trust (LightBox) Photographing the intersection of Islam and culture in Bangladesh

Anja Niedringhaus: The Dismantling of America’s Presence in Afghanistan (TIME) The exodus of U.S. troops from Afghanistan is a messy affair thanks to all the stuff brought in to fight a 12-year war

Daniel Berehulak: Reeling From War, Afghan Society Ill-Equipped to Face Addiction (NYT) Growing army of drug addicts in Afghanistan

Stefano de Luigi: Mongol Rally (VII) The Mongol Rally, which completed its tenth race in 2013, is a nontraditional road race that spans some 8,000km—nearly 5,000 miles—from its starting point in Europe to its finish in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Alessandro Gandolfi: Zahia’s Trip (Parallelo Zero) Palestinian girl living in Gaza City and suffering from leukemia, has to travel to Tel Aviv every two weeks for treatment | Gandolfi’s website

Bjoern Steinz: A Wall Runs Through It (Panos Pictures) The ghettoisation, exclusion and poverty of Slovakia’s Roma community

Jennifer Tse: Child of the Sewer (Foto8) Romanian woman who has lived most of her life in the sewers of Bucharest

Brendan Hoffman: The Town with No Tomorrow (Foreign Policy) Snapshots of life in a Siberian town that’s lost its livelihood

Misha Friedman: The Superstar and the Sex Symbol (LightBox) The World’s Highest Ranking Chess Champions

Alex Majoli: A night at Osteria Francescana (Photo Booth) Majoli’s pictures of Italian chef Massimo Battura as he prepared for a night at the restaurant

Mark Peterson: Political Rhetoric in Black and White (NYT Lens) Peterson’s website and Instagram

Charles Ommanney: American Gun Stories (Reportage by Getty Images) Ommanney travelled across the United States to photograph gun owners and learn why they choose to bear arms

Lottie Hedley: Unbroken (Daily Mail) Inside the Amish world in Maine

Jill Knight: At West Point: Duty, Honor, Gay Marriage (NYT Lens) For months, the photographer Jill Knight followed a couple of West Point graduates, who became the first male gay marriage at the military academy

Jared Soares: Uniting a community through basketball (CNN Photo blog) Basketball loving community in Barry Farm, one of the oldest African-American neighborhoods in the U.S. capital

Ilana Panich-Linsman: Forever 15 (NYT Lens) Panich-Linsman shadowed a group of 15-year-old girls — having been 15 herself not too long ago — to document their making the small decisions that began to define them as women

Nolan Conway: The American Nomads of Walmart’s Parking Lots (Wired Rawfile)

Clay Lomneth: Girl with autism never says ‘I love you’ (CNN Photo blog)

Barbara Davidson: Celebrating the ‘Lord of Miracles’ (LA Times Reframed) Major Catholic procession in Los Angeles

Mauricio Lima: A Grim Aftermath (NYT) An altercation during an amateur soccer match in Brazil led to the deaths of the two people involved

Louie Palu: Mexico’s Violent Drug War (The Atlantic) After covering Afghanistan for more than five years, photographer Louie Palu returned to North America to cover the bloody drug-related crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border

Simon Roberts: The Social: landscapes of leisure (FT) A series that Simon Roberts was commissioned to take as part of “The Social: encountering photography”, a month-long celebration of photographic work in northeast England

Edward Burtynsky: Water (NYT Lens) Using aerial photographs that render imperiled landscapes almost abstract, Edward Burtynsky explores the consequences of human activity bearing down on the earth’s resources

Articles

Portraits of War: From the Civil War to Afghanistan (Washington Post) Package honoring war photographers: five from modern wars and five from the Civil War

Robert Nickelsberg’s Afghanistan: A History (Photo Booth) Prestel is publishing a collection of Nickelsberg’s work that captures the country’s tumultuous modern history

Afghanistan: Seen Through the Lens of Anja Niedringhaus (The Atlantic)

In Russia, Conflating Journalism and ‘Hooliganism’ (NYT Lens) The Russian journalist Denis Sinyakov, detained while photographing Greenpeace activism in the Arctic Circle, is sitting in a cell 23 hours a day and may face seven years’ imprisonment

Is This The Future Of Photojournalism? (Lens Culture) Thoughts on whether the recent New York Times multimedia ‘A Game of Shark and Minnow’ could be an indication of the future

Can Medium Resurrect the Photo Essay? (Medium)

Syria: the shots that shook the world (Telegraph) Five photographers who have borne witness to Syria’s civil war tell the stories behind their defining images of the conflict | Related photo gallery here

Polish photographer Marcin Suder kidnapped in Syria back home after escape (alarabiya.net)

The month in photography (Guardian) November’s guide to the best photography exhibitions and books

Celebrating the Courage of Children in Rajasthan (PROOF) Stephanie Sinclair’s photographs from India

Around Any Corner, Moments That Endure (NYT) Photographs from “Everybody Street,” a new documentary about New York street photographers

Testimony through photography (CBS) A retrospective exhibition of Ron Haviv’s work, “Testimony” will opened Nov. 1, 2013 at Anastasia Photo in New York

Book Review: Son (Photo-Eye) Look at Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson’s new book

Bruce Wrighton’s Photographs of Binghamton, New York (Photo Booth) Few people had encountered the work of Bruce Wrighton when he died, twenty-five years ago, at the age of thirty-eight. His documentary photographs of his home town of Binghamton, New York, surfaced slowly in the following years, providing an intimate look at the small city during the economically depressed years of the late nineteen-eighties

Neal Boenzi’s New York Photographs (NYT Lens) Neal Boenzi, one of New York Times’s storied staff photographers, surrendered a trove of photos to be organized for a new exhibit, showcasing the career he made with his index finger

A Bystanders View of History (Photo Booth) In conjunction with the upcoming anniversary, the ICP has mounted an exhibition, “JFK November 22, 1963: A Bystander’s View of History,” that focusses on the visual records of the event captured by people who bore witness to it from the sidelines

Photographer Elliott Erwitt in search of the real Scotland (Telegraph) Veteran American photographer Elliott Erwitt’s assignments have been many and varied. How would he capture Scotland on behalf of a whisky company? | Photos here

Grit, Grain, Veins: The Diaristic Photographs of Jacob Aue Sobol (LightBox) Intimate stream-of-consciousness-style photographs featured in the Magnum photographer’s latest book

Veins: a Scandinavian photobook full of blood, nudity and human strangeness (Guardian) Sean O’Hagan on Anders Petersen and Jacob Aue Sobol’s new book | Slideshow here

War/Photography exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum (New Yorker) Landmark exhibition arrives to New York

Uncensored Instagrams From North Korea Buck Brutal Trend of Secrecy (Wired) Associated Press photographer David Guttenfelder’s popular Instagram photographs

Allen Frame: Dialogue with Bolaño (Photo Booth) A photographer and a writer sharing themes of menace, intrigue, and sensuality

Photographer Richard Renaldi Puts Two Strangers Together For Intimate Photographs, And The Results Are Surprising (Elitedaily.com) Video

Discovering the Next Generation of Photojournalists at World Press Photo’s Masterclass (LightBox)

Per-Anders Pettersson’s best photograph: Xhosa manhood ceremony (Guardian) Pettersson talks about one his favorite photographs

Mike Berkofsky’s best photograph: Jimi Hendrix (Guardian)

Featured photographer: Dimitris Michalakis (Verve Photo)

Featured photographer: Mikolaj Nowacki (Verve Photo)

Interviews and Talks

Documenting War: Peter van Agtmael in Conversation with Philip Gourevitch Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 (Aperture Foundation Vimeo)

On Being a Woman Photographer With Maggie Steber and Lynn Johnson (PROOF)

Nicos Economopoulos (Ideas Tap) Magnum photographer Economopoulos on working in the Balkans and southern Europe

Robin Hammond (firstlightphotoschool.com)

Gregory Heisler (PDN) Heisler on his new book and best portraits

Benedicte Kurzen (Photo Raw interview on NOOR website) Kurzen on the myth of the war photographer

Santiago Lyon and Hal Buell (Newseum YouTube channel) AP photo director Santiago Lyon and former AP photo director Hal Buell discuss the photographic history of the Vietnam War, as well as the current state of war photography

Ed Kashi (PROOF) “What it takes is a desire, a hunger, to see and to capture things.” – Ed Kashi

Steve McCurry (Paris Match L’Instant) McCurry interviewed about his new book by fellow photographer Pascal Maitre. NB. English translation below the French text

Nicole Tung (Photo Brigade) Tung on her work covering the Arab Spring

Andrew Lichtenstein (Thephotographerdiscloses.com) Lichtenstein discusses his work “Landscapes of American History” which documents how historically significant sites in the U.S. look today

Kadir van Lohuizen (Paris Match L’Instant) van Lohuizen on his Via Panam book. NB. English translation below the French text

Nic Dunlop (Panos Pictures Vimeo) Nic Dunlop spent 20 years photographing Burma under military rule. His book – Brave New Burma – is an intimate portrait in words and pictures of a country finally emerging from decades of dictatorship, isolation and fear. n this film Dunlop talks about this work, the history of Burma and it’s possible future.

Ben Lowy (Hipstamatic blog) Lowy on his iPhone photography

James Estrin (Vogue Italy)

Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini (American Photo)

Photographer Tomas van Houtryve’s artifacts (PROOF) Artifacts is a series about physical items that have meaning to photographers in the field. The items are styled, shot, and described by the photographers themselves

Jane Hilton (Ideas Tap) On her work documenting brothels

Neil Harris (Columbia Visuals) Fortune’s magazine’s associate photo editor Harris gives advice to photographer

Mikko Takkunen is an associate photo editor at TIME.com. Follow him on Twitter @photojournalism.