From the Publisher

By Elizabeth P. Valk

For about six weeks last year, the world became one giant megalopolis for photographer Anthony Suau. Assigned to shoot the pictures for this week's cover story on the many problems and opportunities to be found in megacities around the globe, Suau began in Kinshasa, Zaire, and wound up in New York City's South Bronx, by way of Mexico City; Sao Paulo and Curitiba, Brazil; and Tokyo. "I was shotgunning from one city to the next," recalls the 36-year- old native of Peoria, Illinois. "One street in Tokyo just blended into the next one in New York City."

And yet Suau was able to capture something unique in each setting he visited. Viewed through the lens of his camera, the largest cities of the world reveal striking as well as subtle differences. Suau's photos also bear witness to the most persistent, if rather ironic, question of human existence: Will our own refuse overtake us?

Danger is frequently part of the urban equation, and this assignment was no exception. To do his job, Suau had to bring thousands of dollars' worth of camera equipment into the most destitute sections of the cities he visited. "Sometimes you almost needed your own gang for protection," he says. In Zaire mourners in a funeral procession threw stones at the car in which Suau and his guide were riding. On one of the major drug-sale corners in the South Bronx, people in the buildings above heaved eggs and rotten food at Suau and the cortege of Guardian Angels who were escorting him through the neighborhood.

Not that Suau, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his photos of mass starvation in Ethiopia, is unaccustomed to danger. He has covered the wars in Eritrea and Afghanistan and was part of a group of journalists detained and then released by the Iraqi military in the aftermath of the Gulf War. In addition, he was among the first journalists to enter Romania after dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's fall and execution. His first book, a joint project with TIME senior writer Lance Morrow, to be published later this year, is eyewitness to the democratic upheavals in the Philippines, South Korea, Pakistan, eastern Germany and elsewhere.

Currently a resident of Paris, Suau has achieved what most of us can only hope for. "Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to travel the world as a photojournalist," he says. Now he has his dream. And fortunately for Suau, it's a dream that seems fulfilled only until the next challenging assignment comes along.