Week In Photos: Osama’s tourist attraction…topless congressmen…and more

My weekly review of photography from the US press is up at Le Lettre de la Photographie. The samples:

1. After Abbottabad

The week following the successful operation against Osama bin Laden, President Obama’s approval rating in one poll climbed dramatically. Last month, 46 percent of Americans said they approved on his overall job performance; this week, 57 percent gave him thumbs up. In Abbottabad, Pakistan, the compound in which Bin Laden lived, and died, became a tourist attraction. Here, a woman photographs her daughter at the cmpound’s gate. Photo by Aqeel Ahmed/AP.

2. A Face in the Crowd

The scene here has become the great visual cliché of the Arab Spring uprisings—angry demonstrators in crowded streets, fierce faces and fists raised for photojournalists’ lenses. The dynamism and expression of this Yemeni boy, photographed during a demonstration in Sana, makes Hani Mohammed’s picture a standout. Photo by Hani Mohammed/AP

3. War Photographers

The deaths of photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Misrata, Libya in April focused attention of the dangers that war photographers face. Christopher Anderson, a veteran combat photographer himself, made portraits of a number of his colleagues, who appear as apparitions in a half-world away from guns and bombs. From left: Yuri Kozyrev; Tyler Hicks; Michael Kamber; Lynsey Addario, Ashley Gilbertson; and Alan Chin.

4. A Day at the Races

The Kentucky Derby comes with abundant tradition, like mint juleps and very strange hats. The event’s most honored visual tradition is the shot of horses racing toward the finish line, shot from inside the rail with the landmark spires of the Churchill Downs in the background. The addition of looming grandstands on either side of the older building has spoiled the gracefulness of the view, but John Gress of Sports Illustrated captured the excitement of the moment as this year’s winner, Animal Kingdom, thundered past, leading the pack by two-and-a-half lengths.

5. Body Politic

One of the more controversial images of the week appeared on the cover of Men’s Health magazine. It shows Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock shockingly exposed in an unbuttoned shirt. The magazine dubbed Schock, who is a Republican, as “America’s Fittest Congressman,” which is  not as lofty a political pedigree as that of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, another Republican, who was once named “America’s Sexiest Man” by Cosmopolitan magazine, in which he posed nude. It is a better fate, however, than that of former Republican Congressman Chris Lee, who resigned after sending a topless picture of himself to a woman he met on Craigslist. America’s right wing is pumped. The cover was shot by photographer Martin Schoeller.