Pictures of the Day: Afghanistan and Elsewhere

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Photos from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, South Korea and Italy.

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Pictures of the Day: Turkey and Elsewhere

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Photos from Turkey, Indonesia, Chile and Nepal.

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Pictures of the Day: Bangladesh and Elsewhere

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Photos from Bangladesh, Jerusalem, Romania and Kentucky.

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Pictures of the Day: California and Elsewhere

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Photos from California, Pakistan, Iraq and Bangladesh.

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Sunday Column: A Model of Restraint in the Race for News

A Model of Restraint in the Race for News

THE TIMES, it is safe to say, had a very good week. On Monday, it won four Pulitzer Prizes - the third most in its history and twice as many as any other news organization this year.

On Wednesday, it stayed on the safe side of “the Rubicon of inaccuracy” - in the words of Jill Abramson, the executive editor. That regrettable river was crossed, in a bizarre chain of events that was painful for any journalist to watch, by CNN, by the normally cautious Associated Press, and by many others who cited unnamed law enforcement sources.

The Times wisely sat tight and did not report, as the others did, that an arrest had been made or that a suspect was in custody in the deadly explosions at the Boston Marathon. And when the police did pinpoint the suspects in the bombing at week's end, The Times was on top of the story quickly.

I've been critical of The Times in many ways over the past eight months. It can be self-satisfied, too willing to circle the wagons, too ready to cooperate with the government. It made some bad factual mistakes in the breaking coverage of the Newtown massacre, and it sometimes chooses to ignore or underplay important subjects. I could go on.

But right now, let's give credit where it is due. The Times proved itself worthy of its reputation as journalism's gold standard and served its readers well by staying away from unconfirmed reports. Its reporting from Boston all week was fast, deep and accurate.

By contrast, for more than an hour on Wednesday afternoon, other news organizations took the bait. They excitedly reported an arrest, then they backed off, saying reports were conflicting, and made retractions. A one-word Twitter message from The Columbia Journalism Review summed up the mess: “Sigh.”

Ms. Abramson, who in her first full year as executive editor oversaw the publication of 2012's prizewinning work, told me she consistently gets the message out to editors and reporters that accuracy comes first.

“Everyone in the newsroom knows that I'm competitive, but I have been careful never to send a message that I put a premium on speed on breaking news,” she said.

What The Times can and should offer its readers is coolheaded certainty: If you read it here, it's right. The Times can't beat Twitter or cable news at their own frenzied game; it can be the place to come for accuracy, perspective and depth. As digital tools continue to revolutionize journalism, The Times is realizing and asserting its proper and much-needed role.

Beyond the facts, readers had other concerns about the Boston coverage. I heard from some who reasonably objected that The Times was sending e-mail alerts and Twitter messages about its Pulitzer Prizes at almost the same time it was sending notices about the grim news from the marathon.

It should be noted that the confluence of the two events was extraordinary. In the Times newsroom, hundreds of employees had gathered for the Pulitzer celebration just as the news of the Boston explosions was becoming known. The lengthy speeches went on as planned, even as other reporters and editors scrambled - right in the midst of the same crowded room - to start posting on the excellent live blog known as The Lede, to write an initial news article, and to dispatch reporters. The surreal scene in the newsroom was dissonant, but it didn't keep the job from getting done.

(In a more fortunate coincidence of timing, one Times reporter, John Eligon, had just run the marathon himself and went back out to the scene. His article, written with Michael Cooper, led the Tuesday print edition.)

Another concern was about graphic photographs. David Slarskey, a Brooklyn reader, had strong objections to an image of an injured woman that was published on the front page on Tuesday. The ground was bloody, as was the clothing or bandages around her upper leg. The photograph was undoubtedly distressing - and powerful.

Mr. Slarskey wrote: “While there is no denying the newsworthiness of the event, which must be reported, and even the sensitivity of the volunteers in assisting this woman, the imprinting of images like this on society is the very purpose of terrorist conduct. Surely there are equally important images to be featured without highlighting the terror-inducing gore.”

I respect this view, which I heard from many others, but I found the photo choice reasonable. If it had shown one of the dead, or gruesome detail of a severed limb, I would have felt differently. The journalistic imperative is to give readers an accurate sense of what happened - simply put, to tell the truth.

It is useful, too, to think about the photographs that readers accept unquestioningly when they show bloody scenes from, say, Iraq or Syria. The protests seem to come more often when such images are of Americans, or when they are closer to home.

But another reader, Darryl Campagna, an Albany journalist and teacher, objected to the “artistic cropping” of a photograph of a young man, Jeff Bauman, whose badly damaged legs would be amputated, being wheeled through the street. She noted that some other media sites did not do the same: The Huffington Post used the uncropped photograph in its graphic original form, showing the terrible injuries, the man's destroyed limbs.

Ms. Campagna wrote of The Times's decision: “What gives? Aren't we all adult enough to see the horrific consequences of these horrific actions?”

Michele McNally, The Times's assistant managing editor in charge of photography, said that after considering both the cropped and full photographs sent by The Associated Press, she felt the cropped one was stronger.

“You did not need to see the rest of the picture,” she said. “The legs actually distracted you from seeing the intense look on his face, the ashen quality that suggested how much blood had been lost.” I agree that the image used by The Times packed a huge emotional punch without confronting readers with gore.

The Times is far from perfect. But last week, in its intelligent and restrained handling both of images and facts, it looked like a newspaper worthy of this year's Pulitzer glory.

Follow the public editor on Twitter at twitter.com/sulliview and read her blog at publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com.  The public editor can also be reached by e-mail: public@nytimes.com.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on April 21, 2013, on page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: A Model of Restraint in the Race for News.

The Monday In-Box: What Readers Are Telling the Public Editor

Here's a look at what readers of The Times had to say over the weekend, based on what came across my desk.

1. Many readers are reasonably criticizing the way an anonymous quote was presented in the compelling front-page article about Katherine Russell, the widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspected Boston bombers:

Stephen Dougherty of Santa Barbara, Calif., phrased it gently:

The article is well written and I appreciate the obvious effort the reporters went to get such a well-researched story.

But I am curious about this sentence: “She seemed to embrace her new religion willingly and enthusiastically,” said someone who occasionally attended Russell family gatherings, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to betray the family's confidence.”

How does remaining anonymous prevent the person from betraying the family's confidence. To prevent that, the person should not have spoken.

To be clear, I have no problem with The Times reporting what the person said, but I don't think the family's confidence was maintained. Perhaps it would have been better to simply say “a person who wished to remain anonymous.”

I love the New York Times reporting, excellent writing and editing. But this phrase just does not seem to ring true.

Another reader, Jeff Cohen, made the same valid point but did so more critically:

This sentence is inaccurate in explaining the grant of anonymity to a New York Times source: “She seemed to embrace her new religion [...] said someone who occasionally attended Russell family gatherings, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to betray the family's confidence.”

Instead, didn't the source request anonymity just exactly in order to betray the family's confidence - but without getting caught at it?

Anonymity doesn't negate a breech of confidence, it just makes it impossible to pin on the source. The logic of quoted characterization is especially poor. Using the same logic you could write that someone leaking government secrets did so anonymously so as to avoid breaking laws prohibiting leaks.

There's gentling euphemism and then there's mischaracterization, and the “Path From Social Butterfly” article crosses the line in the above instance. It's especially egregious because it affirmatively states that a breech of confidence can be avoided by doing it anonymously. If euphemism is needed or deserved, it could be done more artfully with less damage to the truth.

Explaining grants of anonymity in ways friendly to the source, to get the source to speak at all or for any other reason, should not trump the paper's obligation to report truthfully and accurately.

The article's editor, Hilary Stout, agreed that the description was faulty. She wrote to me in an e-mail, after I sent her Mr. Cohen's complaint, that she was wrong in not changing the wording and regrets not doing so. “This reader makes an absolutely valid and important point,” she wrote.

Ms. Stout, a deputy editor on the National desk, was handling two major front-page stories that day and, she said, “I managed to read straight past this illogical explanation for his anonymity.”

Separately, although on a related subject, some readers objected to the large photograph of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev used with a strong Sunday front-page profile of him â€" and criticized the prominence of the article itself, saying that both the photo and the display gave harmful attention to the suspected killer, thus encouraging others.

Jenny Callicott put it this way: “I am deeply disturbed to see on the Sunday front page the huge photo of Tsarnaev! This portrait-like photo and headline only serve to elevate and glorify him. I am sure every terrorist will cut this out and frame it!” She wondered why editors would make “such a poor and hurtful choice for your newspaper?”

I understand the point these readers make but don't agree. The article, which gives us a deep look into this young man's background and personality, was worth the major display. I don't believe that terrorists are created by this kind of media attention.

2. They're wondering why I haven't commented on or written about Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's criticism of The Times last week, regarding its coverage of stop-and-frisk and the killing of a black teenager. In fact, I am interested in this topic, and hope to return to the subject later this week.

3. They are responding to my column in Sunday's paper about Jayson Blair, with one reader making the point that I “buried the lead” in making the comparison to The Times's coverage of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the end of the column. William Fordes of Santa Monica, Calif., wrote:

Most of the article was directed to Jayson Blair and, by paragraph count, only 3/20th of your time was devoted to the horrendous New York Times coverage of the Iraq war and the WMD debacle. The former was,
certainly, an embarrassment for The New York Times itself, and an annoyance for your readers, but in the end the many false Blair stories damaged only The New York Times. The latter, deeply flawed coverage - led by the awful reportage of, as you put it, “the disgraced reporter Judith Miller” - affected the country and the entire world, ultimately.

I understand Mr. Fordes's point of view but this column's purpose was to look back, 10 years after the Blair episode. The coverage leading to the Iraq war â€" though obviously very important - was not central to this particular column.

And in talking about the need to preserve credibility at The Times - one of the main points of that column - the subject of anonymous sources came up again. Jim Lagier of Walnut Creek, Calif., expressed it well:

I worked for The Associated Press for 40 years, and the pressures for accuracy were incredible. A.P. had stringent requirements for the justification of anonymous sources. Noting the horrible failure during the Boston Marathon, I wonder if the pressure for feeding the insatiable appetite of the Internet has hurt the rules on anonymous sources. When I worked at A.P., the word “anonymous” flashed on the computer screen so everyone knew that was in the story.

Mr. Lagier makes a good point about the dangers of anonymous sources. It's sometimes necessary to quote a source anonymously, but it's almost always problematic in one way or another.

Atop a Mountain, South Africa’s Ghosts

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High up in the Amatola Mountains in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, the village of Hogsback sits atop a plateau, surrounded by mist and a primeval forest. It’s a small place, with one main road, a handful of shops and a large, aching history.

For as long as Alexia Webster can remember, she has visited Hogsback with her family at least once a year, driving nine hours from their home in Johannesburg to a cluster of cabins her great-grandfather built nearly a century ago. To a young child, Hogsback was a mystical place full of ancient trees and twisted foliage, like something out of a J. R. R. Tolkien novel. In fact, Hogsback has often been misidentified as Tolkien’s inspiration for “Lord of the Rings.”

“I remember being very little and walking through the forests,” Ms. Webster said. “It was really fertile grounds for the magic.”

But Hogsback’s story is painfully real.

Long before white settlers arrived, the land was home to Xhosa tribes who lived in the valley and grazed cattle on the mountain, where tradition held that their ancestral spirits resided. In the 1880s, after the Xhosa people had lost much of their land to the British during the Frontier Wars â€" a series of bloody battles that spanned a century â€" an English couple arrived in Hogsback. Enchanted by the cool, misty climate, which was much like Britain’s, they began cultivating the land, planting fruit orchards and berry bushes from their homeland.

The hamlet grew. The pioneers’ sons married Xhosa women, and for a brief time, a mixed-race family thrived in Hogsback. Years later, as South Africa’s apartheid laws took hold, the family was labeled “colored,” stripped of its land and driven off the mountain into exile. By the 1960s, Hogsback was a predominantly white village.

“It became this kind of strange construction,” Ms. Webster said. “Like an odd little England existing high up above the rest of South Africa. There were tea parties and boating clubs, but because it’s such a beautiful place, it also became a refuge for hippies.”

Ms. Webster’s childhood memories of Hogsback revolve around her extended family, whose South African roots are forever entangled with their British ancestry.

Alexia Webster A non-indigenous pine tree.

“We would have these huge family gatherings where all my grandparents’ children and grandchildren would come together,” she said. “There was no electricity. It was very rustic. We were all peeing into potties and making fires in wood stoves. In the evenings, we would gather outside, somebody would build a huge bonfire, and my grandmother would bring out her guitar and start singing old British folk songs.”

Otherwise, Ms. Webster spent her time in the forest. “There’s a really strong sense of there being more there â€" something more to the world and to life,” she said. “But there’s also this kind of anxiety, these ghosts.”

One night, when she was 17, Ms. Webster was attacked while walking alone in the woods. Her childhood naïveté about Hogsback disappeared.

Her recent photographs â€" which are part of a book series that begins publishing this month, “POV Female,” featuring five photographers from Johannesburg â€" are an effort to capture her complex feelings about the village.

Ms. Webster was lucky; she struggled free from her attacker. But the violent episode made her acutely aware of the inequalities that still haunt Hogsback. Under apartheid, black South Africans were not permitted to own land on the mountain; they lived as temporary workers in the backyards of their white employers and were separated from their families in the valley below. Although they are free to settle in Hogsback today, most cannot afford to live there.

“There’s a growing hostility or tension because things aren’t changing,” she said. “There’s definitely a desire on the part of some white residents to keep it the way it is, and obviously black residents are getting quite frustrated.”

Ms. Webster also began to consider her own role in Hogsback’s history, as the descendant of a white family that helped colonize the land, and one with a deep and abiding love for the place. On the one hand, Hogsback feels like an ancestral home, she said, because so many of her forebears passed through there. On the other, it feels like “stolen land.”

“I’ve never known how to make peace with that feeling of being at home in one way, and in another way, an intruder in the place,” she said.

Photographing Hogsback has helped Ms. Webster connect to the village in a more realistic way. “Before, I felt part of the spiritual space, and now I feel like part of the community, and also invested in making it work,” she said. “If Hogsback can come together and work as a holistic and viable society, then that means that it can work in South Africa, and that means that I can work.”

Slowly, things are changing on the mountain, despite a stubborn colonial nostalgia. There are job-creation programs and low-cost housing, but nothing has fully ameliorated the lingering injustices.

“Hogsback feels like a metaphor for a lot of what’s happening in South Africa now,” Ms. Webster said. “At the moment, there’s a real sense of pessimism, a sense that there’s a lot still to do, a lot still left over from apartheid that hasn’t been addressed, a lot of change that still needs to happen. White South Africans still run the vast majority of businesses and the vast majority of land, and there hasn’t been a proper transfer. It isn’t an equal society. It’s a very unequal society.”

Ms. Webster said she had just begun to photograph the village. “If a small little community like Hogsback, which seems so broken in some ways, can be healed,” she said, “then maybe it can be a place to look to for answers, and a place of hope.”

Alexia Webster Peeking through an ocean of clouds, the village of Hogsback in the Amatola Mountains sits more than 4,500 feet above sea level.

Along with Ms. Webster, the “POV Female” series, out this month, showcases photographs from Tracy Edser, Nadine Hutton, Lisa King and Nontsikelelo Veleko.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.

Atop a Mountain, South Africa’s Ghosts

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

High up in the Amatola Mountains in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, the village of Hogsback sits atop a plateau, surrounded by mist and a primeval forest. It’s a small place, with one main road, a handful of shops and a large, aching history.

For as long as Alexia Webster can remember, she has visited Hogsback with her family at least once a year, driving nine hours from their home in Johannesburg to a cluster of cabins her great-grandfather built nearly a century ago. To a young child, Hogsback was a mystical place full of ancient trees and twisted foliage, like something out of a J. R. R. Tolkien novel. In fact, Hogsback has often been misidentified as Tolkien’s inspiration for “Lord of the Rings.”

“I remember being very little and walking through the forests,” Ms. Webster said. “It was really fertile grounds for the magic.”

But Hogsback’s story is painfully real.

Long before white settlers arrived, the land was home to Xhosa tribes who lived in the valley and grazed cattle on the mountain, where tradition held that their ancestral spirits resided. In the 1880s, after the Xhosa people had lost much of their land to the British during the Frontier Wars â€" a series of bloody battles that spanned a century â€" an English couple arrived in Hogsback. Enchanted by the cool, misty climate, which was much like Britain’s, they began cultivating the land, planting fruit orchards and berry bushes from their homeland.

The hamlet grew. The pioneers’ sons married Xhosa women, and for a brief time, a mixed-race family thrived in Hogsback. Years later, as South Africa’s apartheid laws took hold, the family was labeled “colored,” stripped of its land and driven off the mountain into exile. By the 1960s, Hogsback was a predominantly white village.

“It became this kind of strange construction,” Ms. Webster said. “Like an odd little England existing high up above the rest of South Africa. There were tea parties and boating clubs, but because it’s such a beautiful place, it also became a refuge for hippies.”

Ms. Webster’s childhood memories of Hogsback revolve around her extended family, whose South African roots are forever entangled with their British ancestry.

Alexia Webster A non-indigenous pine tree.

“We would have these huge family gatherings where all my grandparents’ children and grandchildren would come together,” she said. “There was no electricity. It was very rustic. We were all peeing into potties and making fires in wood stoves. In the evenings, we would gather outside, somebody would build a huge bonfire, and my grandmother would bring out her guitar and start singing old British folk songs.”

Otherwise, Ms. Webster spent her time in the forest. “There’s a really strong sense of there being more there â€" something more to the world and to life,” she said. “But there’s also this kind of anxiety, these ghosts.”

One night, when she was 17, Ms. Webster was attacked while walking alone in the woods. Her childhood naïveté about Hogsback disappeared.

Her recent photographs â€" which are part of a book series that begins publishing this month, “POV Female,” featuring five photographers from Johannesburg â€" are an effort to capture her complex feelings about the village.

Ms. Webster was lucky; she struggled free from her attacker. But the violent episode made her acutely aware of the inequalities that still haunt Hogsback. Under apartheid, black South Africans were not permitted to own land on the mountain; they lived as temporary workers in the backyards of their white employers and were separated from their families in the valley below. Although they are free to settle in Hogsback today, most cannot afford to live there.

“There’s a growing hostility or tension because things aren’t changing,” she said. “There’s definitely a desire on the part of some white residents to keep it the way it is, and obviously black residents are getting quite frustrated.”

Ms. Webster also began to consider her own role in Hogsback’s history, as the descendant of a white family that helped colonize the land, and one with a deep and abiding love for the place. On the one hand, Hogsback feels like an ancestral home, she said, because so many of her forebears passed through there. On the other, it feels like “stolen land.”

“I’ve never known how to make peace with that feeling of being at home in one way, and in another way, an intruder in the place,” she said.

Photographing Hogsback has helped Ms. Webster connect to the village in a more realistic way. “Before, I felt part of the spiritual space, and now I feel like part of the community, and also invested in making it work,” she said. “If Hogsback can come together and work as a holistic and viable society, then that means that it can work in South Africa, and that means that I can work.”

Slowly, things are changing on the mountain, despite a stubborn colonial nostalgia. There are job-creation programs and low-cost housing, but nothing has fully ameliorated the lingering injustices.

“Hogsback feels like a metaphor for a lot of what’s happening in South Africa now,” Ms. Webster said. “At the moment, there’s a real sense of pessimism, a sense that there’s a lot still to do, a lot still left over from apartheid that hasn’t been addressed, a lot of change that still needs to happen. White South Africans still run the vast majority of businesses and the vast majority of land, and there hasn’t been a proper transfer. It isn’t an equal society. It’s a very unequal society.”

Ms. Webster said she had just begun to photograph the village. “If a small little community like Hogsback, which seems so broken in some ways, can be healed,” she said, “then maybe it can be a place to look to for answers, and a place of hope.”

Alexia Webster Peeking through an ocean of clouds, the village of Hogsback in the Amatola Mountains sits more than 4,500 feet above sea level.

Along with Ms. Webster, the “POV Female” series, out this month, showcases photographs from Tracy Edser, Nadine Hutton, Lisa King and Nontsikelelo Veleko.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.

Atop a Mountain, South Africa’s Ghosts

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

High up in the Amatola Mountains in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, the village of Hogsback sits atop a plateau, surrounded by mist and a primeval forest. It’s a small place, with one main road, a handful of shops and a large, aching history.

For as long as Alexia Webster can remember, she has visited Hogsback with her family at least once a year, driving nine hours from their home in Johannesburg to a cluster of cabins her great-grandfather built nearly a century ago. To a young child, Hogsback was a mystical place full of ancient trees and twisted foliage, like something out of a J. R. R. Tolkien novel. In fact, Hogsback has often been misidentified as Tolkien’s inspiration for “Lord of the Rings.”

“I remember being very little and walking through the forests,” Ms. Webster said. “It was really fertile grounds for the magic.”

But Hogsback’s story is painfully real.

Long before white settlers arrived, the land was home to Xhosa tribes who lived in the valley and grazed cattle on the mountain, where tradition held that their ancestral spirits resided. In the 1880s, after the Xhosa people had lost much of their land to the British during the Frontier Wars â€" a series of bloody battles that spanned a century â€" an English couple arrived in Hogsback. Enchanted by the cool, misty climate, which was much like Britain’s, they began cultivating the land, planting fruit orchards and berry bushes from their homeland.

The hamlet grew. The pioneers’ sons married Xhosa women, and for a brief time, a mixed-race family thrived in Hogsback. Years later, as South Africa’s apartheid laws took hold, the family was labeled “colored,” stripped of its land and driven off the mountain into exile. By the 1960s, Hogsback was a predominantly white village.

“It became this kind of strange construction,” Ms. Webster said. “Like an odd little England existing high up above the rest of South Africa. There were tea parties and boating clubs, but because it’s such a beautiful place, it also became a refuge for hippies.”

Ms. Webster’s childhood memories of Hogsback revolve around her extended family, whose South African roots are forever entangled with their British ancestry.

Alexia Webster A non-indigenous pine tree.

“We would have these huge family gatherings where all my grandparents’ children and grandchildren would come together,” she said. “There was no electricity. It was very rustic. We were all peeing into potties and making fires in wood stoves. In the evenings, we would gather outside, somebody would build a huge bonfire, and my grandmother would bring out her guitar and start singing old British folk songs.”

Otherwise, Ms. Webster spent her time in the forest. “There’s a really strong sense of there being more there â€" something more to the world and to life,” she said. “But there’s also this kind of anxiety, these ghosts.”

One night, when she was 17, Ms. Webster was attacked while walking alone in the woods. Her childhood naïveté about Hogsback disappeared.

Her recent photographs â€" which are part of a book series that begins publishing this month, “POV Female,” featuring five photographers from Johannesburg â€" are an effort to capture her complex feelings about the village.

Ms. Webster was lucky; she struggled free from her attacker. But the violent episode made her acutely aware of the inequalities that still haunt Hogsback. Under apartheid, black South Africans were not permitted to own land on the mountain; they lived as temporary workers in the backyards of their white employers and were separated from their families in the valley below. Although they are free to settle in Hogsback today, most cannot afford to live there.

“There’s a growing hostility or tension because things aren’t changing,” she said. “There’s definitely a desire on the part of some white residents to keep it the way it is, and obviously black residents are getting quite frustrated.”

Ms. Webster also began to consider her own role in Hogsback’s history, as the descendant of a white family that helped colonize the land, and one with a deep and abiding love for the place. On the one hand, Hogsback feels like an ancestral home, she said, because so many of her forebears passed through there. On the other, it feels like “stolen land.”

“I’ve never known how to make peace with that feeling of being at home in one way, and in another way, an intruder in the place,” she said.

Photographing Hogsback has helped Ms. Webster connect to the village in a more realistic way. “Before, I felt part of the spiritual space, and now I feel like part of the community, and also invested in making it work,” she said. “If Hogsback can come together and work as a holistic and viable society, then that means that it can work in South Africa, and that means that I can work.”

Slowly, things are changing on the mountain, despite a stubborn colonial nostalgia. There are job-creation programs and low-cost housing, but nothing has fully ameliorated the lingering injustices.

“Hogsback feels like a metaphor for a lot of what’s happening in South Africa now,” Ms. Webster said. “At the moment, there’s a real sense of pessimism, a sense that there’s a lot still to do, a lot still left over from apartheid that hasn’t been addressed, a lot of change that still needs to happen. White South Africans still run the vast majority of businesses and the vast majority of land, and there hasn’t been a proper transfer. It isn’t an equal society. It’s a very unequal society.”

Ms. Webster said she had just begun to photograph the village. “If a small little community like Hogsback, which seems so broken in some ways, can be healed,” she said, “then maybe it can be a place to look to for answers, and a place of hope.”

Alexia Webster Peeking through an ocean of clouds, the village of Hogsback in the Amatola Mountains sits more than 4,500 feet above sea level.

Along with Ms. Webster, the “POV Female” series, out this month, showcases photographs from Tracy Edser, Nadine Hutton, Lisa King and Nontsikelelo Veleko.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.