A young Chinese Shaolin monk, with his body painted in gold, performs for visitors during a kungfu festival at the temple in Dengfeng, central China's Henan province, on October 24, 2010. The Shaolin temple – which makes millions every year from entrance fees, online sales of Shaolin items such as spearheads and its travelling performing troupes – has attracted controversy in China over charges of rampant commercialism. By STR/AFP/Getty Images.
Children play with fallen leaves in a park in Bucharest on October 21, 2010. By Daniel Mihailescu/AFP/Getty Images.
An Afghan girl, from Kapisa province, stands outside a tent in a camp on the east of Kabul, Afghanistan on October 21, 2010. People from the restive Kapisa province have fled to the camp in part because they are frigthened of the Taliban fighers in the area. By Majid Saeedi/Getty Images.
Kai Wright praises the "I Love My Boo" project:
One of the smartest, most compelling public health campaigns around took off in a big way this month: The “I Love My Boo” series by Gay Men’s Health Crisis, which originally took on sexual health among black and Latino men but has been broadened into an anti-homophobia campaign, too. The idea is as simple as it is revolutionary: Promote loving, healthy relationships rather than preach about disease, and the rest will follow. The campaign’s been around in New York City for a couple of years, but this month it expanded, with posters running on 1,000 subway cars over the month. The visuals are unprecedented: black and Latino men in tender, loving and unapologetically physical embrace of one another.
Dash, a Whippet, runs on a beach in Hong Kong on October 20, 2010. Whippets, part of the sighthound family, were bred to hunt by sight, using speeds of up to 60 kilometres per hour in short bursts to hunt down small game such as rabbits. By Antony Dickson/AFP/Getty Images.
People demonstrate on October 19, 2010 in Paris against pension reform. France faces a sixth day of national protests against President Nicolas Sarkozy's reforms, with the stakes rising after youths battled riot police and filling stations ran dry. A placard reads, "When order is injustice, disorder is a beginning of Justice'. By Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images.
Iranian asylum seekers whose mouths are sewn shut attend a press conference in Athens on October 18, 2010. A group of around 30 Iranian asylum seekers have been on hunger strike in Athens for weeks, and some have sewn their mouths shut to underscore their plight. By Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images.
Claxton, 120 days in Afghanistan
Eliza Williams features Suzanne Opton's arresting portraits of US soldiers, currently at the 2010 Brighton Photo Biennial:
Opton's began photographing soldiers in 2004. For this first series, she asked for a particular pose, capturing the soldiers lying with their heads on one side, staring into the camera lens. According to Opton, the soldiers were more than willing to adopt this position, and she would wait until they became unguarded before she would take the shots. The resulting images are unsettling in their intimacy, and in some the faces resemble death masks, a quality that has led the work to become hugely contentious. …
Rather than simply exhibit the images in a gallery space, where they would be seen by a limited audience, Opton displayed her photographs on billboards around the country, drawing a huge response, both positive and negative, from those who saw them. These reactions played out on her blog, soldiersface.com, where viewers continue to leave comments on the series to this day.
A PLA soldier stops photographs being taken outside a hotel believed to be hosting the Chinese Communist Party's secretive annual meeting, in Beijing on October 15, 2010. The plenum of the roughly 300-member Central Committee in Beijing is typically cloaked in great secrecy with details released only after it ends, with even its location not publicly announced. By Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images.
Marine Cpl. Marcus Ferry of Hamburg, Iowa, attached to India Battery, 3rd Battalion, 12th Marine Regiment, goes for a swim in the reservoir above the Kajaki Dam during a break in action at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Zeebrugge on October 12, 2010 in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Ferry's unit is responsible for securing the area near the dam on the Helmand River. By Scott Olson/Getty Images.
The Dish 