Matthew McKnight writes about a case challenging the N.Y. Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy: “The relationship between law enforcement and communities that the N.Y.P.D. has determined contain high concentrations of crime—thus requiring a heightened police presence—is a complicated, quarrelsome one”: http://nyr.kr/Zy8Rsb

Here, see a selection of photojournalist Nina Berman’s work documenting community outrage around the N.Y.P.D.’s controversial stop-&-frisk policy: http://nyr.kr/NWEGWY

(Source: newyorker.com)

In his piece on Venezuela last week,Jon Lee Andersonwrites about the failed city of Caracas by way of the Tower of David, a looming and dilapidated structure that he describes as “a ziggurat of mirrored glass topped by a great vertical shaft, [rising] forty-five stories above the city.” The Tower, which can be seen from almost anywhere in Caracas, is a symbol of the downward spiral that Venezuela has experienced under Hugo Chávez’s rule.

The Spanish photographer Sebastian Liste met Anderson in Caracas to photograph the Tower. Liste described the experience of photographing the world’s tallest slum in what he says is a hostile, unpredictable city: “Nothing compares to the experience of walking up the dark stairs, one by one, haunted by thoughts of what might come next.” In what he calls “a dance between the eyes of the security guards in every corner and the movement of my arm which holds the camera,” Liste captured in stark detail the condition of the Tower’s residents and those of its surrounding neighborhoods, as well as the chavistas who poured into the streets of Caracas in support of their ailing leader.

Click-through for a slideshow: http://nyr.kr/116kMAl

Last week, the photographer and filmmaker Mikhail Galustov took The New Yorker’s Instagram feed with him around Kabul, Afghanistan, where he is based. (In October, we published a slide show of Galustov’s Afghan faces.) “I wanted to focus on the side of Kabul that rarely makes it on the pages of news outlets,” he told me. “It’s a very special moment in the life of the city; there is an enormous development effort that many find controversial. The upcoming elections and withdrawal of foreign troops make the future look uncertain. Twelve years of intensive foreign investment have created shopping malls, districts of new housing, paved roads, jobs, and a group of nouveau riche that benefitted from the international attention.” Click-through for a selection of favorites from the feed: http://nyr.kr/UxQJuI

The latest segment of HBO’s four-part Witness series follows the French photojournalist Véronique de Viguerie in South Sudan, where thousands have been murdered, kidnapped, or displaced by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army.

Watch a clip from the film (which aired last night on HBO), and click-through for more from Maria Lokke on de Viguerie.