Disturbing Images

Photojournalist Jodi Bieber traveled to Afghanistan for Time magazine to shoot portraits of women there, from an Olympic athlete to politicians to a woman severely burned in a suicide attempt.

In the first video below, Bieber discusses how and why she photographed Aisha, the Afghan teen whose ears and nose were cut off by the Taliban, for the cover.

Her images accompany the text story, Afghan Women and the Return of the Taliban, by Aryn Baker

Here's what Time managing editor Richard Stengel has to say about the controversial cover picture:

Our cover image this week is powerful, shocking and disturbing. It is a portrait of Aisha, a shy 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by a Taliban commander to have her nose and ears cut off for fleeing her abusive in-laws. Aisha posed for the picture and says she wants the world to see the effect a Taliban resurgence would have on the women of Afghanistan, many of whom have flourished in the past few years. Her picture is accompanied by a powerful story by our own Aryn Baker on how Afghan women have embraced the freedoms that have come from the defeat of the Taliban — and how they fear a Taliban revival.

I thought long and hard about whether to put this image on the cover of TIME...

(Read more here.)

Go look at Bieber's online photo gallery, Women of Afghanistan Under Taliban Threat.

Which image would you have selected for the cover of Time magazine? Why?

And now watch Bieber's behind-the-scenes video about her entire photojournalism assignment, Portraits of Afghan Women: