Photographer Tomer Ifrah travelled between six post-Soviet countries, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Russia, Belarus, Georgia and Armenia, documenting city life on the metro, beginning in Moscow in 2012 and continuing until 2019. The images reveal personal stories of everyday life, intimate portraits, and a background of grandiose architecture
Continue reading...Category Archives: Photography
Miraculous moment at a pagan festival: Alexey Vasilyev’s best photograph
‘Yakutia is five times the size of France with a population of just 1 million. Snow lasts from October to April and there are practically no railways or roads. At these festivals, we become whole’
I grew up in Yakutia. It’s the largest region of Russia, five times the size of France, but with a population of only one million spread over three million square kilometres. The climate is severe and contrasting. In summer, it’s 40C; in winter -60C, with snow from October until mid-April. To go anywhere takes a long time – several hours in the car. There are practically no railways and few roads. It’s easier to fly from the far east to Moscow than it is to travel around. Half of the people are ethnic Sakha from Yakutia, half are Russians. The two communities don’t socialise much. The Russians mostly live in the Aldansky district, but their number is shrinking. Many are moving away to less harsh parts of the country.
As a documentary photographer, I want to record how people live here, what they do, what their problems are, what makes them happy. Each solstice we have a holiday called Ysyakh. It’s a pagan festival, an important part of our national identity and a moment when we become an organic whole. Because we are so spread out it’s often hard to feel any kind of unity. Yakutia’s brand is winter; I wanted to show summer. Participants dress up in national costume. Women wear long, flowing dresses decorated with flowers. It’s a moment when people are relaxed about being photographed. There’s still some paranoia in Russia about posing for a camera. It’s a bit of a Soviet hangover.
Continue reading...Eve Arnold images released as posters – in pictures
A set of 15 images are being released by the Eve Arnold estate as posters to help fulfil Arnold’s wishes for her work to be affordable, accessible folk art. Prints would normally cost more than £1,000. The images include two unseen images of Marilyn Monroe on the set of the Misfits
- Unseen Eve Arnold photos of Marilyn Monroe sold as posters for £30
- Images are available for £30 from www.evearnold.com/posters
Visualising gender during the pandemic – in pictures
From transgender sex workers living in a mass shelter whose health relies on back-street clinics, to community leaders who are making changes from the ground up despite a system that is stacked against them, This Is Gender 2021 is the world’s largest photography competition looking specifically at gender and health. The collection offers an insight into our gendered world during the time of pandemic.
- This Is Gender is run by Global Health 50/50 in parallel with the Global Health 5050 2021 Report, Flying Blind in a time of Crisis
Tourists flock to Kazakh glaciers – in pictures
Prevented from travelling abroad by the Covid pandemic, locals are instead visiting the magnificent glaciers of the Tian Shan mountain range near Kazakhstan’s biggest city, Almaty
Continue reading...Women: an exhibition of British press photography
To mark International Women’s Day 2021, the British Press Photographers’ Association has curated a new photographic exhibition, Women, telling the stories and highlighting the achievements of women and girls as recorded through the eyes of its visual storytellers.
Organisers Vickie Flores and Isabel Infantes took the decision to include pictures taken by any of the association’s members rather than just focusing on the views of women.
‘One of the aims of the project was to make photographers of all genders think about how we portray women and to achieve equality and gender parity, we need the support of each other’
Continue reading...Protests in Myanmar – in satellite pictures
Satellite photographs of protesters, demonstrations, troops, and street art show the extent of the resistance to the military coup
Continue reading...A smuggled bird and fuel protests: Tuesday’s best photos
The Guardian’s picture editors select photo highlights from around the world
Continue reading...Someone Close: the intimacy between photographers and subjects
Photography collective Oculi’s first group project gives a glimpse into the lives of 12 members and the people they share their lives with
Conor Ashleigh – photographer
Mazie Turner was more than just my creative mentor; she was a friend, an aunty, a collaborator and above all one of my greatest inspirations. Since passing away in 2014, Mazie has never been far away.
This January I made the most of a summer in Australia and headed north on a road trip. I visited Mazie’s two eldest granddaughters Mali and Lily, both of whom I had often photographed a decade ago as part of my project Baby in a Chapel. I was amazed to see how Mali and Lily had grown and flourished in the seven years since I saw them last. Mali was entering her final year of high school, and she had become a talented and articulate young woman.
Continue reading...Happy ‘farmily’: portraits of people and their animals – in pictures
Photographer Tasha Hall creates what she calls ‘farmily’ portraits – featuring families and their animals. Hall, from British Columbia in Canada, says she got the idea after wanting to include all her furry friends in a family portrait. She now travels the world capturing other families with their livestock and pets
Continue reading...Purim in Covid times – in pictures
Israel has set a curfew to limit festivities for the Jewish holiday when revellers don costumes and party into the night. Similarly muted celebrations have taken place around the world
Continue reading...Kenya’s Serene Haven school opens doors to teenage mothers – in pictures
Private school in central Kenya is welcoming pregnant teenagers, teenage mothers and their babies to ensure they have the chance to finish an education otherwise denied to them by stigma, logistics and lack of money
Continue reading...Art, unlocked: Italy’s museums quietly reopen – in pictures
After Italy’s government loosened Covid-19 restrictions in much of the country – including Lazio, the region that contains Rome and Vatican City – newly reopened museums are offering local visitors the opportunity to enjoy artworks undisturbed by the usual crowds of international tourists
Continue reading...Nude selfies: are they now art?
Lockdown has triggered a boom in the exchange of intimate shots – and now a new book called Sending Nudes is celebrating the pleasures and perils of baring all to the camera
Have you ever sent a nude selfie? The question draws a thick red line between generations, throwing one side into a panic while the other just laughs. And yet, as far back as 2009, that fount of moral wisdom, Kanye West, was advising how to stay safe. “When you take the picture cut off your face / And cover up the tattoo by the waist,” he rapped in Jamie Foxx’s song Digital Girl.
As the pandemic forces relationships to be conducted remotely, more people than ever are resorting to the virtual exchange of intimacies. Last autumn, a poll of 7,000 UK schoolchildren by the youth sexual health charity Brook put the figure at nearly one in five who said they would send a naked selfie to a partner during a lockdown.
Continue reading...Spanish people take to streets over rapper’s jailing – in pictures
Free speech protests have continued since the jailing of musician Pablo Hasél last week for exalting terrorism in his lyrics
Continue reading...Sydney hotel quarantine – a photo diary
The photographer Jillian Edelstein flew to Australia in December to visit her mother, who had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in October. On arrival in Sydney she was bussed to a police hotel. A quarantine exemption was refused so she had to endure a 14-day wait before being able to see her mum. These images form her very personal diary of that experience, some of which she shared on Instagram, edited for publication
Continue reading...John Malkovich as eerie identical twins: Sandro Miller’s best photograph
‘I wanted to pay homage to work that made my knees buckle. John looked nothing like Diane Arbus’s twins. But on set his spirit left and theirs came in’
Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer. The prognosis wasn’t 100% positive and there were days when I’d lay in bed wondering if I’d ever be able to shoot again. I’m self-taught, and I started thinking about the images that had changed the way I thought about photography – work by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus, work that made my knees buckle with emotion.
I thought: if I ever get better, I would love to pay homage to these greats, in a way nobody has done before.
Continue reading...‘A great cover for their first album’: Harry and Meghan’s romantic rebellion against royal portraiture
The Sussexes’ baby announcement shared on Valentine’s Day is a confident image of defiance that seems to take us inside their love – granny must find it utterly baffling
The Duke of Sussex’s left foot steals the show. His knobbly toes shove themselves into the foreground, bulging out to rhyme with his wife’s baby bump. Misan Harriman, the Nigerian-born photographer and friend of Meghan who took the picture remotely from his home in Woking, has created an unbuttoned romantic pastoral that doesn’t so much rebel against royal portraiture as bring it to an end.
Producing babies has been the primary business of royalty since time immemorial. Harry and Meghan’s new child will be eighth in line to the British throne, but the picture tells us quite flamboyantly the Sussexes are not in Britain and have no desire to be. It is a confident image of defiance. A cup of California dreamin’. The garden looks semi-tropical. Harriman’s preference for black and white gives the sun-kissed lawn a lovely silvery glow that sets the couple almost in a vision of paradise. But at the same time, their intimate casualness – those toes again – is intended to show us they are anchored to the reality that matters.
Continue reading...The edible art of sourdough faces – in pictures
Five years ago, Swedish designer and stylist Linda Ring experienced total burnout. After a few months doing nothing, she tried to adopt a slower lifestyle. “I started baking sourdough, but as it’s my nature to try to make everything beautiful, I began experimenting.”
Ring’s loaves became canvases for portraits and landscapes, scored into the raw dough. “You never know how the bread or the pattern will turn out, it’s enormously satisfying when I take it out of the oven and see.”
Continue reading...Some people are on the pitch! Sports photos with a twist – in pictures
Combining thousands of images, Pelle Cass’s photographs of tennis, basketball and more perfectly evoke the chaos and physicality of sport
Continue reading...