December has brought a diverse batch of publications featuring some of my photos. Most notably, one of my images from the Maoist revolution in Nepal was chosen for the book 100 Photos du XXIe Siecle (100 Photos of the 21st Century), which was just published by la Martiniere in France and covers key global events from 2000-2010.
The photo, taken in 2005, shows a young female guerrilla soldier training with a battalion of other Maoists in the village of Gairigaon, which at the time was part of the rebels’ stronghold in far Western Nepal. Bizarrely, the girl in the photo is wearing a Britney Spears t-shirt, despite the fact that she is an indoctrinated Marxist fighter.
The village was two separate plane flights and then another five days walk from Kathmandu. There was no electricity, and the soldiers were training in the yard of a dirt-floored school. Exactly how Britney Spears’ likeness appeared in such a remote scene remains one of the mysteries of globalization. My partner on the trip through the Maoist heartland was TIME journalist Alex Perry, and he recounts more about that journey and other adventures in his book Falling Off the Edge: Globalization, World Peace and Other Lies.
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Next up is a rare peek inside the Facebook offices in Paris, France.
Linked with the announcement that Mark Zuckerberg was named TIME’s Person of the Year, the magazine sent photographers to four of Facebook’s offices around the world. To see some of the images that didn’t make it in TIME, I’ve posted a larger selection here.
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And finally, LIFE.com has compiled the work of five award-winning photographers for a revealing photo essay about Korea.
Hats off to LIFE’s editors for including long, well written captions with each image. The additional information is especially helpful for a place that is so difficult to decipher.
