Compelled by stories he’d heard as a child, the photographer Showkat Nanda traveled to the high Himalayas to see Gurez, a valley long off-limits to most travelers.
ValTown, an account on X and other social media platforms, spotlights gangs and drug kingpins of the 1980s and 1990s — and how crime and celebrity often intersect.
He documented the cruelties of white South African rule, and he was made to pay for it, enduring beatings and 586 consecutive days in solitary confinement.
Our correspondents ventured to some of the world’s most remote, and dangerous, locales to report stories that reveal a country’s culture and the human condition. Here are our favorites from the year.