The Guardian’s picture editors select photo highlights from around the world
Continue reading...Category Archives: Photography
Gaza’s silent children – in pictures
Brazilian photographer Felipe Dana arrived in Gaza to cover the aftermath of the last war in May and was struck by how children were suffering psychologically
Continue reading...‘I shoot for the common man’: the photographs of Danish Siddiqui
The photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was shot dead last week while documenting the Taliban offensive in Afghanistan. His award-winning work for Reuters spanned some of the world’s most era-defining crises.
He said: ‘I shoot for the common man who wants to see and feel a story from a place where he can’t be present himself.’
Siddiqui leaves behind his wife, Rike, and two children. And a breathtaking body of work
Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha – in pictures
Eid al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice, is celebrated throughout the Muslim world to mark Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God. Cows, camels, goats and sheep are traditionally slaughtered on this day
Continue reading...Parklife: the year we fell in love with London’s green spaces
Sophia Spring’s photographs celebrate how London’s many parks became a lifeline for locals during the pandemic, writes novelist David Nicholls
We didn’t call it the park; it was the “rec”, as in “recreation ground”. A flat, featureless oblong of patchy grass, sodden in winter, parched in summer, scattered with ring-pulls and dog mess – this was the late 70s – its great featureless expanse broken only by buckled goalposts and a few skinny, unclimbable trees. I hated the rec, partly because of the threat of team sports, partly because of the possibility of violence – the two seemed to go together – but during those long, endless days of summer, when the glare of sunlight on the TV screen became too much, we were harried out of the house to “get some fresh air”. And so we loitered on that great barren prairie, an immense waiting room, wondering why anyone would go to the park out of choice.
Last summer, there were queues at the gates of Clissold Park and anyone wanting to exercise in Highbury Fields was advised to go early to avoid the rush hour. All over the city, the parks began to resemble the sites of the festivals that had all been cancelled and if Londoners had ever taken their green spaces for granted, there was no danger of that now. In the space of six months, they’d been repurposed as meeting rooms, nightclubs, concert halls, theatres and cinemas, cafes and restaurants, impromptu markets, family living rooms, gyms. London is supposedly a city of 3,000 parks and while I’m a little sceptical of that number, it’s true that the city had never seemed greener than that summer. On early morning bike rides I discovered Bushy and Ruskin and Trent, Peckham Rye and Beckenham Place and Ladywell Fields. I discovered the canals and waterways that link them too, the bloodstream of London, captured so brilliantly by Sophia in these photographs. Walk north on the Lea, west or east on the Grand Union, south on the Wandle or the Waterlink Way and you can see the ghosts of London’s old industries, cranes and disused warehouses and old pumping stations. Keep walking for the rest of the day, under the pylons and past the depots, and you can feel the city fading behind you, the skies opening up.
Continue reading...Aftermath of Germany and Belgium floods – in pictures
At least 110 people have died in devastating floods across parts of western Germany and Belgium. Search and rescue operations are continuing with hundreds still unaccounted for
Continue reading...France celebrates Bastille Day – in pictures
Thousands of troops march in a Paris parade, warplanes roar overhead and traditional parties take place around the country as France celebrates its national day after last year’s events were scaled back because of the pandemic
Continue reading...Rooftop crops: urban farms in Hong Kong – in pictures
More than 60 urban farms have sprouted across space-starved Hong Kong since 2015 – on decommissioned helipads, shopping mall rooftops and public terraces – thanks to initiatives such as Rooftop Republic
Continue reading...We, Women: The Power of We – in pictures
We, Women is a social impact photography project led by women and gender nonconforming artists across the US, examining issues including immigration, education, climate change, race and motherhood
- We, Women: The Power of We is at the Empire Fulton Lawn directly under the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn Bridge Park, 13 July-12 September 2021
A love from beyond the grave – Kurt Tong on his ‘ghost marriage’ photographs
His latest project, piecing together the story of a bereaved Hong Kong man who wed his dead fiancé, has won an award. The photogapher reveals how it began with the discovery of a trunk of keepsakes
At the centre of Kurt Tong’s elaborate visual narrative Dear Franklin, there is a doomed love story that is also a ghost story. It traces the intertwined lives of Franklin Lung, a man who rose from poor beginnings to become part of Hong Kong’s social elite in the 1940s, and a young woman known only as Dongyu, the daughter of a high-ranking Chinese general.
They met, fell in love, but shortly after their engagement, Dongyu was one of several thousand refugees fleeing the Chinese communist army on board the SS Kiangya when it struck an old Japanese sea mine. “Their love story should have ended with this terrible tragedy,” says Tong, “but it continued after her death because Franklin agreed to a ‘ghost marriage’, an elaborate traditional ceremony in which he became eternally wedded to Dongyu in the spirit world.”
Continue reading...Two decades of Indigenous photography: the work of Wayne Quilliam – in pictures
For more than 20 years, Aboriginal photographer Wayne Quilliam has captured significant Indigenous events across Australia, from the national apology to the Stolen Generations to the Garma, Barunga and Yeperenye festivals. In his travels through country, Quilliam often visits communities to teach Indigenous youth how to capture their own lives through a lens. His book, Culture is Life, is a modern, photographic celebration of the diversity of Indigenous Australians
Continue reading...‘I see people ageing – I don’t always see us’: one family, 30 years, 30 photographs
It was a simple idea: one family, photographed at the same time every year. Zed Nelson has traced Sue and Frank’s transition from new parents to grandparents. What’s it like to see your life pass in front of you?
In the summer of 1991, photographer Zed Nelson, then 25, invited a couple of new parents he was acquainted with to visit his London studio. Oh, and bring your baby, he said. At the time he had ambitions to be a travelling photojournalist. Within the year, he would fly out on the first of a series of visits to far-flung conflict zones. But for this, Nelson had in mind a quieter, more domestic project. He set up a backdrop and lights, and he encouraged the visiting parents – a personable couple called Sue and Frank whom he’d met at a party – to pose with their newborn, Eddie. The parents held hands, wild-eyed, visibly shot through with the terror and excitement of parenthood. Eddie, weeks old, oblivious, considered his own fingers and dribbled. It might have been any other family portrait.
Except that Nelson invited Sue, Frank and Eddie back to his studio for more portraits, at the same time of year, every year, for as long as they agreed to come. He would chart the evolution of a parenting life, with Sue fixed in position on the right of the picture, Frank on the left, Eddie inching up between his mum and dad. “Same backdrop every year, same lights, same camera, same angle,” Nelson explains, thinking back over the finicky logistics of a project that has run since 1991 without interruption. “Every year I measure out the distances to the inch. It drives us all a bit mad. But we do keep coming back.”
Continue reading...Record-breaking heatwave sweeps Canada – in pictures
A searing heatwave that settled over western Canada has been blamed for contributing to the deaths of dozens of people in the Vancouver area
Continue reading...Wolfgang Tillmans on space, Brexit and Covid: ‘Let’s hope we get on a dancefloor soon’
From tiny weeds to distant galaxies, the photographer likes to scrutinise the interconnectedness of everything. He talks about coping with lockdown – and living through his second pandemic
Wolfgang Tillmans and I talk on the phone on 23 June, which he calls the “fifth anniversary horribilis”, referring to the Brexit vote. He’s at home in Berlin: a day later, he will travel to the UK to install his new exhibition, Moon in Earthlight, in the seaside town of Hove. To conform to Covid protocols, he’ll be doing it on his own, without his usual assistants, carefully placing his photographic images around the space – a former Regency flat owned by his gallerist Maureen Paley.
These photographs range from an image of wet concrete pouring out of a nozzle to one of a root’s tendrils creeping along a gap in the pavement. They are presented in a variety of formats, from huge printouts suspended on bulldog clips to small photographs tacked to the wall. Like all his shows, Moon in Earthlight will serve as an installation in its own right, a manifestation of Tillmans’ tender scrutiny of the universe. It also includes a collection of astronomical yearbooks dating back to 1978, when the artist was a stargazing 10-year-old.
Continue reading...Photographer Donavon Smallwood: ‘What’s it like to be a black person in nature?’
The self-taught 27-year-old discusses Languor, a prize-winning series of portraits shot in Central Park over the past year
Since he was seven years old, Donavon Smallwood had lived in the same apartment in Harlem close to the northern tip of Central Park. As a teenager, he hung out there with his friends and, later, as he became interested in photography, he would often wander through the park with his camera looking for hidden places where the clamour of the city seemed a world away. “So many urban communities don’t have any nature spaces,” he says, “so I was lucky to have one close by.”
In 2019, he had “a vague idea for a project about walking and looking”, a flaneur’s take on the park as a place in which to lose oneself. Throughout the spring and summer of 2020, while New York was in lockdown, he photographed in and around the wooded north-western corner of the park, where ravines, glades and manmade waterfalls give the impression of a natural wilderness. Often, on his way there and back, he encountered the same people, locals mainly, for whom the park was a place to escape the constrictions of the Covid pandemic.
Continue reading...Miami building collapse: rescue operation under way – in pictures
Dozens still unaccounted for after part of a beachfront condominium block collapses in Surfside
Continue reading...Moscow’s record heatwave – in pictures
Moscow has been hit by a heatwave this week, with temperatures reaching a 120-year record high due to the effects of the climate emergency, Russia’s weather service has said
Continue reading...Documenting violence against migrants in South Africa | a photo essay
More than 12 years have passed since xenophobic violence swept unexpectedly through South Africa’s townships, leaving more than 60 people dead, hundreds injured and tens of thousands displaced from their homes. Photojournalists James Oatway and Alon Skuy document the unrest in a new book, [BR]OTHER
In May 2008, a series of xenophobic attacks accompanied by widespread looting and vandalism left at least 62 people dead, 1,700 injured and 100,000 displaced in South Africa. The violence began in Alexandra in Johannesburg after a local community meeting at which migrants were blamed for crime and for “stealing” jobs. Within days the attacks had spread around the country, with Ramaphosa settlement on the East Rand becoming one of the areas that witnessed inhumanity on an unthinkable level.
Continue reading...‘Never stop dreaming’: refugees get behind the camera – in pictures
Witness Change, a project for the Open Society Foundation, photographed 1,000 people who left their homes for a new life, and found a common thread of humanity in the dreams that sustain them
Continue reading...‘We have more in common than what separates us’: refugee stories, told by refugees
In One Thousand Dreams, award-winning photographer Robin Hammond hands the camera to refugees. Often reduced by the media’s toxic or well-meaning narratives, the portraits and interviews capture a different and more complex tale
Robin Hammond has spent two decades crisscrossing the developing world and telling other people’s stories. From photographing the Rohingya forced out of Myanmar and rape survivors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to documenting the lives of people in countries where their sexuality is illegal, his work has earned him award after award.
But for his latest project the photographer has embarked on a paradigm shift: to remove himself – and others like him – from the process entirely. Instead, as part of an in-depth exploration of the refugee experience in Europe, the stories of those featured are told by those who, arguably, know them best: other refugees.
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