As Chinese spending on pets increases by up to 27% year on year, a Beijing firm has created its first cloned kitten
Continue reading...Category Archives: Photography
Carol Guzy’s best photograph: a little girl in the war-ravaged ruins of Mosul
‘It was innocence amid war – this tiny girl who should have been enjoying her childhood trapped in this catastrophic battle’
I was one of the last photographers left in Mosul during the final days of the battle to liberate the Iraqi city from Islamic State in July 2017. I have covered the humanitarian consequences of war for three decades, but the sheer horror I witnessed during this conflict felt different.
There was no end to the cruelty. The stream of suicide bombs, grenades, car bombs, and snipers was relentless. People were forced to watch their loved ones die in front of them. And when civilians did reach the point of escape, Isis would use them as human shields.
Continue reading...Meghan pays tribute to fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh
The German photographer, who worked on the Duchess of Sussex’s Vogue cover, was best known for his 90s portraits of Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and others
German fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh, who died on Tuesday aged 74, was renowned for black-and-white portraits that appeared in magazines including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and the New Yorker, as well as his refusal to retouch images. Recently, Lindbergh photographed women for the “Forces for Change” issue of British Vogue, guest-edited by Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, including Jane Fonda, the climate activist Greta Thunberg, and New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
On the duke and duchess’s official Instagram account, Meghan shared an image of herself with the photographer, captioned: “His work is revered globally for capturing the essence of a subject and promoting healthy ideals of beauty, eschewing photoshopping, and preferring natural beauty with minimal makeup.”
Continue reading...My best shot: Rena Effendi on haymaking in Transylvania
‘The light was soft … They were so graceful. They are the last peasants, the last of their kind’
In 2012, I travelled to Transylvania to document what is effectively the last remaining bucolic landscape of Europe. England, for example, has lost most of its hay meadows because of large-scale agriculture, but in Romania this kind of small-scale sustainable way of farming persists. It survived the Ceaușescu regime. It survived the EU. Today, however, it is a vanishing way of life as young people increasingly choose to migrate to western Europe in search of work and faster money.
I spent three weeks in Maramureş in the northern Carpathian mountains, exploring life in six tiny hamlets, each with no more than 500 inhabitants. It was August, the height of the haymaking season. Families worked in the fields from dawn to dusk. These women were from a village called Breb. I saw their haystacks from the road as my translator and I drove past. I shouted “stop!” and ran out of the car towards them. They smiled at me, but we didn’t talk, they just carried on with what they were doing. It was late in the day, and they were getting ready to go home. The women wear trousers to make hay because the wind blows their skirts up. Here, they were putting their headscarves and their traditional skirts back on. Then they gathered their baskets, in which they’d brought their lunch, and walked back to the village. I followed. The light was very soft, and the shadows long.
Cutting hay and stacking it is physically demanding, I tried doing it myself and failed miserably
Continue reading...Life after apartheid: images from the new South Africa
Thabiso Sekgala’s solo show features work taken by the late South African photographer offering nuanced, alternative narratives about life in contemporary Africa. His work focused on the idea of home and the personal, political or economic conditions that determine our relationship to it.
Continue reading...Brazil to open long-distance hiking trail in Atlantic forest – in pictures
Inspired by long-distance tracks such as Canada’s 15,000-mile Great Trail, a proposed 4,970-mile trans-Brazil hiking trail would provide a continuous coastal corridor from its southern border with Uruguay to its northern frontier with French Guiana
Continue reading...Czech Republic’s historic stud farm – in pictures
The national stud farm, which was established in the 16th century to breed and train ceremonial horses for the Habsburg court, has become a Unesco world heritage site. Located 56 miles east of Prague in the town of Kladruby nad Labem, it is the first stud farm in the world to be be listed by UN agency
Continue reading...Shanghai’s ostracised skateboarders – in pictures
Skateboarding will debut in the Tokyo Olympics next year. Despite this, those who are part of a growing scene in Shanghai, China, complain of being labelled troublemakers
Continue reading...Life in Tel Aviv’s bohemian bus station – in pictures
Opened in 1993 with hopes of rejuvenating one of Tel Aviv’s poorest neighbourhoods, the central bus station is now an eclectic mix of commerce and culture
Continue reading...Joy, despair and determination: photographs from Kibera
Despite its poverty, Kibera is a vibrant place where people survive in testing conditions, both physical and mental. These images by four photographers born and bred there capture the spirit of Africa’s largest slum.
An exhibition, ‘Kibera: Living in the slum’, is on show at the Guardian’s London offices until 31 August
Continue reading...Remembering the Berlin Wall – in pictures
The order for work to start on building the Berlin Wall was issued on 13 August 1961. East German guards sealed the border, preventing an exodus to the west. Barbed wire was gradually replaced with the concrete barrier, which remained until 9 November 1989
Continue reading...Small is beautiful in Tokyo’s Golden Gai – in pictures
Nearly 300 bars and restaurants are squeezed into an area about the size of half a football pitch in the Golden Gai area of Tokyo. Everything is smaller and narrower in this warren of shacks, a sliver of old Tokyo in a modern metropolis
Continue reading...Hiroshima remembers – in pictures
Survivors mark 74th anniversary of atomic bombing of city in second world war with one minute’s silence
Continue reading...Big cats and exotic birds: Colombia’s rescued animals – in pictures
Most of the animals at the Santa Cruz Foundation in San Antonio, Colombia, have been rescued from traffickers and circuses. The multimillion-dollar illegal wildlife trade is the fourth-largest in the country after drugs, guns and human trafficking
The South African teenagers using radio to fight gun crime – in pictures
Every week a group of South African teenagers crowd into a studio to play hip-hop and discuss neighbourhood gun crime for their community radio show, Bigger Than Life, on Alex FM. They are determined to help stem the violence that blights their densely populated township of Alexandra in Johannesburg
Continue reading...Fighting for their futures: boxing under a bridge in Mexico – in pictures
Former professional football player and amateur boxer Miguel Angel Ramirez has set up a small gym under a vehicular bridge in Ecatepec, in the State of Mexico, in order to keep children away from drugs, teach them a sport and prevent them enlisting in the ranks of organised crime
Continue reading...A load of hot air: ballooning world record attempt – in pictures
More than 400 hot air balloons attempt to break the simultaneous takeoff world record in the Grand Est Mondial Air Ballons festival at Chambley-Bussières airbase in eastern France
Continue reading...Switzerland’s wine festival – in pictures
The Swiss town of Vevey has staged a once-in-a-generation celebration of its winemakers, with fancy dress, alpine horns, cows and dancers kicking off a festival that dates back to the 18th century. The three-week Fête des Vignerons, which began in 1797, is held roughly every 20 years and on Thursday 5,500 locals donned costumes, wigs and makeup to take part in the gala opening
Continue reading...Tattoos, tans and techno: the photographers capturing the unseen Beirut
Ravers, semi-naked sun-worshippers, booming queer culture … we meet the photographers chronicling a new generation of Lebanese shaking off the trauma of civil war
‘Parties are a privileged place, a space for exploration, a time for fusion,” says photographer Cha Gonzalez. They’re also the focus of her series Abandon, which looks at the way some Lebanese people have used nightlife – and techno music in particular – as a release after the trauma of the country’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. “I knew a lot of people who were either born during the war or in exile,” she says. “What was put aside during the day came to light – and their internal struggles surfaced.”
Abandon is a pertinent theme not only for Gonzalez, but for all of the 16 contributors to an exhibition in Paris called C’est Beyrouth (This Is Beirut), at the Institut des Cultures d’Islam. Gonzalez in particular seized on the city’s dance scene, and later continued the series in Paris, where she lives, because “there was something to say about countries that are very far from war as well. The war is inside us: how we feel useless, alone, bored, guilty, horny.”
Continue reading...Trump’s Independence Day parade in Washington DC – in pictures
Donald Trump is overseeing Fourth of July celebrations with a speech about patriotism and a show of military might that critics say is politicising an important holiday and wasting taxpayers’ money. The president has dismissed concerns about the event, which will take place in front of the Lincoln Memorial and feature fireworks, a flyover by Air Force One and a display of tanks
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