In a spectacular case of carelessness, Ugbo, 75, of Benin, a witch doctor specializing in arrest-evasion amulets, has been arrested. A selection of small fates

The “neutral” and panoptic eye of Google itself becomes the camera, and under these conditions, the photographer’s task becomes curatorial

These are photographs not merely of human cruelty but of human helplessness. They remind us (we do not wish to be reminded) that there will always be a minority of people whose luck is bad in the extreme.

One of the best ways to judge a book is by its cover. Here are some of the better book covers of the year, as…

The appeal of the pre-modern is in its strangeness, its estrangement from us, its trust in a system we’ve since jettisoned.

Why had Pontormo come here? To escape the plague. The year was 1522.

All photography is a record of a lost past. Photography does not share music’s ability to be fully remade each time it is presented, nor…

We are not mayflies. We have known afternoons, and we live day after day for a great many days. This long experience of how days…

Edinburgh. It’s my third day here, a return to Scotland after 18 years away. My readings at the book festival are done, and all I…

Portraits from Twinsburg, Ohio, July 2012

The gray-eyed gaze of the man in the painting is a dare. Show me who’s done it better, he seems to say. Didn’t think so, he adds.