David Schonauer –The Weekly World Tour

David Schonauer’s selection this week is a tragic one. Disaster is everywhere. Japan is devastated by a series of natural catastrophes. Rescue workers and journalists from around the world are beginning to reveal the scope of the disaster. Go Takayama (New York Times) used an intimate approach, capturing a volunteer bathing a recently evacuated infant, with his parents, from a village close to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. In The New Yorker, Adam Dean’s picture of a fireman in the night sparks of the cinema. David Guttenford shot a field of ruins, typical of the images we’ve been seeing recently of Japan, but always horrible. Only a few rare photographers were sufficiently removed from the emotional shock to capture original viewpoints, James Nachtwey was one of them. He chose to work in black and white (Time).

While Japan counts its victims, other countries are murderous. Issouf Sanogo captured three corpses in the streets of Abidjan (New York Times). Anja Niedringhaus followed the rebels in Libya. John Moore (New York Times) shot two of the four reporters taken hostage by Moammar Gaddafi’s rebel forces, Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario.