Photograph by Andrew B. Myers for TIME

Spread from this week’s cover story on millennials photographed by Andrew B. Myers.

Photograph by Manish Swarup—AP

The LightBox spread in the latest issue of TIME: Villagers in Nandgaon, India, take a break from the Lathmar Holi celebration on March 22. Festive face and body pigment is part of the Hindu tradition for the holiday, which marks the start of spring.

Above: March 22, 2013. Indian villagers from Nandgaon wait for the arrival of villagers from Barsana to play Lathmar Holi at the Nandagram temple in Nandgaon, India. (Manish Swarup—AP)

“It’s a lull before a storm,” AP photographer Manish Swarup tells TIME. “These villagers from Nandgaon have taken a little break after putting colors onto each other while waiting for the  arrival of villagers from Barsana, the legendary hometown of Radha, consort of Hindu God Krishna.”

This week, Hindus in India celebrated the festival of colors known as Holi, a religious tradition welcoming the coming of spring through singing, dancing and the splattering of vibrant body paint. The event has offered unparalleled creative inspiration for wire photographers working in color like Swarup, whose image from March 22, 2013 made it in this week’s issue of TIME.

The villagers seen above, Swarup explains, “were a little exhausted of playing Holi since morning but their spirits and enthusiasm to color villagers from Barsana was very high. I too was waiting for them. One of the arches on extreme left was empty and I was hoping that someone would come and sit there. Suddenly one of their friends came and rested for a while. I quickly made few frames.”

How does a photographer prepare to enter a scene of flailing water and pigment? Swarup had wrapped his camera in “a cling film and then a protective rain cover.”

—Eugene Reznik

See more of this week’s best photos at LightBox.

Above: The opening LightBox spread of the April 1, 2013 issue of TIME. Photo by Stefan Wermuth—Reuters.

From Obama’s first Presidential visit to Israel and the Pope’s inauguration to a series of suicide bombings in Pakistan, Iraq and Somalia and the colorful Lathmar Holi festival in India, TIME presents the best images of the week.

Photograph by Justin Fantl for this week’s issue of TIME, illustrating the story Growing Pains. (which was then later turned into this lovely GIF)

Above: March 18, 2013. A Somali woman reacts near the site of a car bomb in central Mogadishu. (Mohamed Abdiwahab—AFP/Getty Images)

This week, the tenth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq was met with a wave of violence throughout the Middle East and Africa.
 
In the Somali capital Mogadishu, which until February had been experiencing an 18-month period of peace and economic development, al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that took the lives of upwards of 10 civilians, injured Somali intelligence chief Khalif Ahmed Ilig and left an entire neighborhood devastated.
 
At the time of the bombing, AFP photographer Mohamed Abdiwahab was sitting at a tea shop, sharing tips with colleagues not far from where the blast took place.
 
The explosion rocked the neighborhood, shattering windows. As smoke filled the air, shrapnel rained down around Abdiwahab. Overcoming his initial shock and finding himself uninjured, he ran toward the scene of the blast, camera in hand. Somali security forces were firing rounds to keep the crowds away in the midst of the post-explosion chaos.
 
“I came across this lady by the scene coming out of the smoke and the fire, holding her head and fleeing while looking back, so shocked and crying,” he told TIME.  That’s when he started photographing the scene, capturing the photo above, which appeared in this week’s issue of TIME and on the front page of the New York Times.
 
“The picture looks so emotional and it was really talking — it was telling the whole incident there in one shot,” Abdiwahab says. “I was looking back [through] my camera when I left… I was still shaking.”
 
It was not the first time that Abdiwahab had photographed explosions or seen people dying, “but this one really was completely different,” he admits. “It’s very hard when you go into an environment like Mogadishu, where you don’t know what to expect — where anything can happen.”

—Eugene Reznik

See more of the week’s best photos at LightBox.

Sheryl Sandberg photographed by Robert Maxwell for this week’s issue.

Alessio Romenzi for TIME

We are honored to announce that this photograph by Alessio Romenzi, taken for TIME, was awarded first prize in the general news story category for World Press Photo.

14 February 2012 Al-Qusayr, Syria. A child mourns her father, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed by shabiha (government militias) with other two men. Their bodies were abandoned in a main street. The civilian unrest in the Syrian Arab Republic began in March 2011 and continues to affect people, particularly in the most vulnerable segments of the population. At least 60,000 people have been killed since uprising began, according to the United Nations (UN), and the number of Syrian refugees registered by the UN in the Middle East and North Africa has surpassed half a million. The situation continues to deteriorate in villages and cities in the country, leaving people without protection, shelter, food and water and facing fear every day.

See more of the winners on LightBox here.

Photograph by Paola Kudacki for TIME

“Had there not been a Mary Todd, there wouldn’t have been an Abraham Lincoln,” Sally Field says of the mercurial First Lady. “She was complicated and brilliant, and she had a keen sense of where she would be placed in history — she would not be looked at fondly.” 

See more from TIME’s Great Performances portfolio here.

Photograph by Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for TIME

Here, a selection of the best photography from TIME’s coverage of Egypt’s revolution that started on Jan. 25, 2011 — and its turbulent aftermath.