The Best New Yorker Photography of 2019 | The New Yorker

This portfolio was one of many striking photo commissions published in the magazine this year. In July, the photojournalist Adam Ferguson spent more than two weeks in Afghanistan with the contributing writer Luke Mogelson, meeting former isis commanders and reporting on life in the country after eighteen years of war. In March, the photographer Vasantha Yogananthan travelled to the remote mountainous territory of Ladakh, in northern India, to investigate an idiosyncratic solution to the erratic supply of water in the high-desert region: the ice stupa. Built at nearly twelve thousand feet, these massive ice sculptures melt in the spring, providing water to farmers in the area.