Li Zhensheng, photographer of China’s Cultural Revolution, dies

Former publisher announces death of Li, known for his book Red-Color News Soldier

The Chinese photographer Li Zhensheng, known for his unflinching portrayal of China’s Cultural Revolution, has died, according to his former publisher.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, which in 2018 published the first Chinese-language edition of Li’s book Red-Color News Soldier – a compilation of photos he had hidden from the period – said Li, 79, had died after spending several days in hospital following a brain haemorrhage.

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Color is not a crime: New York’s Black Lives Matter street art

Across the US, artists have responded to the death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests with impactful and urgent work. In New York, artworks have appeared supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, and remembering the deaths of, among others, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and Eric Garner

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Cafe culture returns to France after lockdown – in pictures

In Paris, contented customers sit outside cafes and sip their morning espressos for the first time in 11 weeks. There are, however, strict rules: bars and restaurants have permission to sprawl across pavements but tables must be 1m apart. In the rest of France, customers can now be served inside while maintaining the same distance

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Picturing lockdown: Historic England’s archive of isolation – in pictures

Today, Historic England reveals 200 new images which have been added to their archive to form the Picturing Lockdown Collection. This follows a call-out asking the public to photograph their lockdown from 29 April to 5 May. The appeal was the first time the public have been asked to submit photographs for the archive since the Second World War.

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‘It’s our sanctuary’: gardens in lockdown, as seen by drone

Photographer Robert Ormerod uses his aerial camera to document how neighbours are finding solace in their green spaces. By Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Robert Ormerod had just moved house when lockdown began. “We lived in a flat before. We moved for a garden,” he says. “So when this kicked off, we couldn’t believe how lucky we were to have moved in time.”

As with most photographers, his ability to work has been limited, so Ormerod hit upon the idea of shooting his Edinburgh neighbours in their gardens. These outdoor spaces have been a boon for millions of families across the UK, who have over the past two months used their patch, however small, to get some fresh air, exercise, escape, grow their own food or get to know the wildlife.

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‘People are more scared of hunger’: coronavirus is just one more threat in Nigeria

The pandemic has left many people in Orile, Lagos state, struggling for survival – and compounded the risks of the area’s heavily polluted air and water supply

  • All photographs by Nurudeen Olugbade

For Nurudeen Olugbade taking photographs of life in Orile-Iganmu, Lagos state, during the pandemic is a way to affirm that the disruption it has wrought on the neglected town does matter.

“We are not really seen. There’s very little attention paid to us but the struggle out here is real,” says Olugbade, 28, who has documented the crisis on his phone.

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‘Colour allows us to understand in a deeper sense’: Hitler, Churchill and others in a new light

The story of global conflict is all the more powerful when it isn’t seen in black and white. Artist Marina Amaral explains her latest work

On a stretcher lies a patient; his ashen face protrudes from under a green blanket, eyes closed. Two uniformed women carry the stretcher, wearing face masks. It looks as if it’s a lovely day: the sun is shining, the shadows dark, the sky blue. But this is not a happy picture. Is the casualty even alive, or has he already been taken by the killer virus that has wrapped itself around our planet like a python, squeezing the life from it?

The photograph was taken at an ambulance station in Washington DC. Within the past couple of months? It could have been, if it weren’t for the uniforms (I don’t think today’s nurses wear lace-up leather boots) and the stretcher. In fact, it was taken more than a century ago, in 1918, during the Spanish flu epidemic, which killed so many millions. The photographer is unknown, forgotten. But the black and white picture was recently “colourised” by Marina Amaral.

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