Category Archives: Photography

A microcosm of segregated America: Michael von Graffenried’s best photograph

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‘The people of New Bern liked the fact my ancestor founded their town. But the atmosphere changed when they realised I was there to show reality, not promote a touristy vision’

The guy on the left is Frank Palombo, the former chief of police of New Bern in North Carolina, a town I have spent the last 15 years photographing. In 2006, an organisation called Swiss Roots invited me to document New Bern as part of their mission to promote a positive image of Switzerland – my country – in the US.

They approached me partly because my ancestor is the settler Christopher von Graffenried, who founded New Bern in 1710 after conflict with a Native American tribe known as the Tuscarora. I knew nothing about him and, initially, neither the project nor my family history interested me. But a month later, I changed my mind – it was a chance to find out whether Swiss-held prejudices about George Bush’s America were true.

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‘I didn’t really watch any tennis’: how Martin Parr captured the Grand Slam’s real champions

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The photographer toured the four tournaments shooting thrilled fans instead of sweaty stars. He talks about why street photography is becoming impossible – and life after his cancer diagnosis

It’s the morning after the night before at the US Open and the sports sections contain images of triumph and defeat. Ecstatic Emma Raducanu lying prostrate on the tennis court. Bereft Novak Djokovic sobbing into his towel. The photographer Martin Parr would have liked to have watched the finals, but he’s been unwell and incapacitated, stuck on one floor of his house with the TV on the other. He briefly considered watching on his laptop but it just seemed too much bother. “I like tennis tournaments,” he says, a little sheepishly. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that I like tennis per se.”

In this, one suspects, he is not alone. Parr’s new book Match Point offers a vivid globe-hopping tour of the four grand slam tournaments, bounding from Melbourne to Paris to London to New York and mingling with the spectators as they ogle their iPhones or sunbathe on the grass or guzzle iced coffee at the refreshment stand (the book was commissioned by the Italian coffee firm Lavazza). Most people, he points out, visit Wimbledon in the same spirit that they would attend Ascot or the Chelsea flower show: it’s a social event, an excuse to dress up. They might spend the entire day in the grounds at SW19 and go home without seeing a single ball being served.

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‘People arrived for work and got vaporised’: how Kikuji Kawada captured the trauma of Hiroshima

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The holy grail of Japanese photobooks, Kawada’s Chizu was five years in the making and changes hands for £25,000 a copy. Now a new edition revisits his personal archeology of a nation’s pain

Kikuji Kawada was 25 when he visited Hiroshima for the first time. It was July 1958 and he had been assigned by a Japanese news magazine to assist Ken Domon, a renowned photographer 14 years his senior. As Domon worked in and around the Hiroshima Peace Park, Kawada found himself drawn to the ruined shell of a once ornate, steel-framed building that had been badly damaged, but somehow remained standing, when America dropped the first atomic bomb on the city at 8.15 am on 6 August 1945, obliterating everything else within a mile radius.

“That’s when I found them,” he would later recall, “the stains on the walls of the rooms beneath the dome.” The bomb had been dropped from almost directly above the building, which was then called the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. Alone in the dank ruins, Kawada realised that the stained walls held the only traces of some of the dead. “When the place was destroyed,” he told Aperture magazine in 2015, “there were about 30 people (who) had arrived for work and ended up vaporised. The place had a horrible atmosphere. Just looking at it was overwhelming.”

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Leonard Cohen goes to the doctor: Ian Cook’s best photograph

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‘He said he had to see a throat specialist then added: “Do you want to come along?” Later, we drove to a party with me sitting on his lap in a limo’

In 1979 Leonard Cohen was in London for a few days on a European tour and I had been assigned to photograph him by the US magazine People. I arrived at the Dorchester Hotel and was shown up to his room. He announced that he had picked up some sort of larynx infection on the plane and that he might not be able to perform. He said that he had an imminent appointment with a Harley Street specialist. My heart sank and I thought: “There goes the assignment.” Then he said brightly, “Do you want to come along with me?”

We hopped in a taxi and I followed him into the surgery. The doctor examined him, sat him in a chair and gave him a nebuliser. With his dark glasses on, a scarf wrapped around his neck and a large silver-coloured mask covering his nose and mouth, he looked quite bizarre but it made an unusual photograph, not like any others I’d seen of him. Forty minutes later, much to his relief – and mine – he said he felt much better.

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La Palma’s Cumbre Vieja volcano erupts – in pictures

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A surge of lava has destroyed about 100 homes on Spain’s Canary Islands a day after a volcano erupted, forcing 5,000 people to leave the area. Cumbre Vieja erupted on Sunday, sending vast plumes of thick black smoke into the sky and belching molten lava that oozed down the mountainside on the island of La Palma, one of the most westerly of the Atlantic archipelago off the coast of Morocco

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‘It’s heartbreaking’: Steve McCurry on Afghan Girl, a portrait of past and present

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The US photographer’s image of Sharbat Gula captured the story of a country, its people and refugees across the world. Thirty six years on, another picture tells a similar tale – but also one of hope

On 1 September, a young Afghan girl stood in line with her family at a US base in Sicily waiting to board a flight to Philadelphia. She is about nine years old and is one of more than 100,000 people evacuated from Kabul by allied forces after the Taliban took control of the country in August.

Her photo, taken for the Guardian by Italian photojournalist Alessio Mamo and featured on the front page of the UK print edition, resembles the Afghan Girl by American photographer Steve McCurry. McCurry’s portrait, of a Pashtun child, Sharbat Gula, which appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic, became the symbol, not only of Afghanistan, but of displaced refugees across the world.

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One month in Kabul under Taliban rule– a photo essay

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Photojournalist Stefanie Glinski reports from Kabul on the events of the past four weeks and the capital’s new rulers

Above its tightly clustered houses and peaks of the Hindu Kush mountains, Kabul’s blue skies were once dotted with countless colourful kites, flown by children from the hilltops or their rooftops. Since the Taliban took the Afghan capital a month ago, they have disappeared.

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Deep impact: the underwater photographers bringing the ocean’s silent struggle to life

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Kerim Sabuncuoğlu – just one winner in this year’s Ocean photography awards – tells the story behind his picture of a moray eel that also shows the wider perils of ‘ghost fishing’

In July, off the Turkish port city of Bodrum, Kerim Sabuncuoğlu stepped from the edge of a boat into the azure Aegean Sea and began to descend. A scuba diver with more than 30 years’ experience, he took up underwater photography in 2002 and has since devoted considerable amounts of time and money to his “out-of-control hobby” – capturing the wonders of the ocean on camera so that “the less fortunate people above” can also marvel at them.

Sabuncuoğlu has travelled the world, photographing marine life in Palau, Cuba and the Galápagos islands and winning several awards for his work. Closer to home in Bodrum, he was embarking on a standard dive with a group of friends, equipped with a Nikon D800 camera. The camera had an 85mm micro Nikkor lens and was clad in Nexus underwater housing, with a single Backscatter snoot to train light on the subject.

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‘It helped me get away from crime’: Cape Town’s College of Magic – a photo essay

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Photographer Tommy Trenchard documents students whose stories of transformation at the Hogwarts of South Africa are more than just fairytales

To fans of JK Rowling’s books, the story may sound somewhat familiar: a young boy living in difficult circumstances is enrolled in a mysterious school far from home, where his life is changed for ever by the transformative power of magic.

Anele Dyasi’s story is no fairytale, though, and the school in question is not Hogwarts, but the College of Magic in Cape Town, a unique institution that has been training some of the continent’s most skilled illusionists since the 1980s.

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Photographer David Bailey reveals he has vascular dementia

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‘It’s just one of those things,’ says the British celebrity snapper, 83, who is still busy with new work

David Bailey has revealed he has dementia, a life-limiting condition the British photographer described as a bore.

Speaking to the Times, Bailey, 83, said: “I’ve got vascular dementia. I was diagnosed about three years ago.

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‘Running didn’t even occur to me’: Gulnara Samoilova on photographing 9/11

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‘A cop asked me: “How can you take photographs?” I told him: “I have to document this. It’s history”’

I was asleep when the first plane hit. At the time, I lived just four blocks from the World Trade Center, right next to a hospital, a fire station and the HQ of the New York police. The sirens woke me up. They were nonstop. I turned on the television and saw one of the towers on fire. As I watched the second plane hit the south tower on TV, I also heard it because I lived so close.

I was working for Associated Press (AP) as a photo editor. I knew, as their closest staff member, that I should go out and document it. I got dressed, threw some film into my camera bag, and ran out to the World Trade Center. A lot of photography is like muscle memory. Even in a situation like this, your body knows exactly what to do. I remember a cop asking me: “How can you take photographs?” I told him: “I have to document this. It’s history.”

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Andrew Quilty documents 12 days of chaos in Kabul – in pictures

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The Australian photojournalist has been working in the Afghan capital as troops from the US, UK and Australia withdraw. A period culminating in two suicide bombings, which tore through crowds trying to enter Hamid Karzai international airport

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Baby on Nevermind cover sues Nirvana over child sexual exploitation

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Spencer Elden, who appeared at four months old on iconic album design, claims the image is child pornography

Spencer Elden, who appeared as a naked baby on one of rock music’s most iconic album covers – Nevermind by Nirvana – is suing the band, claiming he was sexually exploited as a child.

In a lawsuit filed in a Californian district court against numerous parties, including the surviving members of the band, Kurt Cobain’s widow Courtney Love, and the record labels that released or distributed the album in the last three decades, Elden alleges the defendants produced child pornography with the image, which features him swimming naked towards a dollar bill with his genitalia visible.

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