Georg Gerster died on Friday, 8 February 2019 at his home in Switzerland. In 2006, the British Museum held a major photographic exhibition for the very first time, presenting Georg Gerster's unique collection of aerial photographs of archaeological ...

2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution when, on 11 February 1979, the Iranian Army declared its neutrality, yielding power to revolutionaries loyal to Ayatollah Ruholah Khomeini and ending the Pahlavi dynasty that had ruled the country...

On the outskirts of Kharkiv, a drab industrial city in eastern Ukraine, a vast wooden box spilling out of a three-storey brick building houses The Institute, a life-size film set that is a perfect replica of an imaginary 1950s Soviet community. The ...

"Education will ruin our culture" laments Dorje, a local Tibetan teacher describing how compulsory education is driving the resettlement of nomads. "These lifestyles are endangered. You rarely see people on horseback nowadays. To improve ...

High up in the Peruvian Andes, way above the tree line, lies the city of La Rinconada, some 5,100 metres above sea level and thus the highest permanent human settlement in the world. With temperatures over the year averaging 1.2C and frequent rain and ...

One hundred years after the foundation of the hugely influential Bauhaus school in Weimar by Walter Gropius, Stefan Boness documents the eclectic architectural intricacies of Tel Aviv, one of the greatest concentrations of Bauhaus architecture in the ...

In war and conflict, women are often sidelined or forgotten and all too often become the victims of violence. History relegates their actions to the back pages. But they have much to tell about life under fire. They are fighters, victims and ...

The leaves of the khat plant, native to the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, are a popular stimulant in countries like Yemen, Somalia and Ethiopia and have been consumed for thousands of years, much like the coca leaf in South America. When ...

In the depths of winter I set out on a long and difficult journey to the coldest populated place in the northern hemisphere. The Pole of Cold is in the Republic of Sakha, also known as Yakutia, in the remote north east of Russia. Two villages, ...

In rural regions of Georgia, a lack of social and economic integration has hindered immigrant communities since the end of the Soviet Union. Those particularly affected are groups of people who were forcibly relocated within the Union and have maintained...

More than 620 million Africans, or 2/3 of the population of the continent, have no access to electricity. Whilst 99 % of North Africa are electrified, only 32 % of the sub-Saharan countries are. In the 48 sub-Saharan countries the total power capacity is...

The Tibetan Plateau spans an area five times the size of Spain and has an average elevation of 4500 metres. After the Antarctic and Arctic, the plateau has the third highest reserve of ice which has led scientists to call it the 'Third Pole', thus ...

On a small patch of grass across the road from London's Houses of Parliament, a bizarre piece of political theatre is played out which encapsulates the complex relationship between politics and journalism. Sound bites are aired, loyalties reaffirmed, ...

No roads, over 200,000 square kilometres of taiga, swamps and permafrost and a mere 16,000 inhabitants living in around 28 villages (or 0.08 per square kilometre). Turukhansk District in the heart of Russia, close to the country's geographic centre and ...

"The Pacific may have the most changeless, ageless aspect of any ocean but the Mediterranean Sea celebrates the continuity of man." (Ernle Bradford, author of 'Mediterranean: Portrait of a Sea') The Mediterranean region has many faces. Rich...

The river Congo is navigable for 1,700 kms from Kinshasa to Kisangani. It is the lifeline of a region with few roads or railways and provides a vital source of livelihood for many of the 29 million people living on the banks of the river and its ...

Nick Hannes travelled the length and breadth of the former Soviet Union - all fifteen former republics - to document the reality of post-communist societies in the fragments of the once all-powerful empire. Along the way he uncovered the different ...

Global warming poses a direct threat to the island nation of Tuvalu. If the most pessimistic scientific predictions turn out to be correct, this pocket-sized Polynesian country, its people and its unique culture will be gone in less than a century, made ...

Less than a century ago, Iran had 10 million inhabitants, 5 million of whom were nomadic. Today, the population has risen to over 81 million but only a much smaller number - 1.5 million - still live a nomadic life. The two main tribes are the Bakhtiaris ...

In ancient times the southern part of the Arabian peninsula, modern day Yemen, was known as Arabia Felix, or fortunate, fertile Arabia. The difference to the current situation could not be more stark as starvation stalks the shattered country and a four...

"Dubai has developed into a vast theme park, where you can ski in the desert and swim with dolphins. Forever in search of illusions, we lose sight of reality. What does that do to your imagination? How many more malls, theme parks and hotels does a ...

I've lived away from the UK since the Thatcher Years. Brexit came as shock. I had perhaps the excuse of distance, but it made me question my British identity after so many years away. Home suddenly got much further away, and yet uncomfortably close, ...

Among the many complex issues facing negotiators from the UK and the EU trying to hammer out an agreement that will define the United Kingdom's relationship with the bloc after March 2019 when the UK is due to exit, the border between Northern Ireland ...

The conflict in Colombia had been going on for so long that it had almost become part of the scenery. FARC guerrillas had lost some 260,000 of their fighters and seven million people had been displaced, with tens of thousands more missing. The ...

With gangly yellow-green petals that hang limply from their stem, the ylang ylang flower is not much to look at. But its powerful scent is so sublime that is has become a favourite of the world's perfumers. It forms the basis of many floral perfumes,...

In most cultures around the world, getting married marks a key moment in a person's life. Each culture celebrates the union in its own way, but nowhere, perhaps, is marriage more elaborate or more important than in the tiny island nation of the Comoros. ...

'One day the soldiers came to my home and tortured me in front of my kids. They were asking for my husband who they claimed was a rebel'. Esther Minella recalls. Within three days of this event, her husband had been killed and she was preparing to walk ...

My trip to Guinea Bissau was the last in a series of journeys to different countries around the world that were colonised by Portugal and still retain Portuguese as their lingua franca. Attempting to analyse the cultural mix of African and European ...

Until early 2018, a tall, decrepit concrete tower, known as the President Hotel, loomed over the streets of Cholon, Ho Chi Minh City's Chinatown. Built as an apartment block by millionaire Nguyen Tan Doi in the 1960s in what was then Saigon, the ...

Bangalore, the centre of India's 'Silicon Valley', is running out of water. Researchers warn that the city, along with other fast-growing urban centres such as Beijing, Mexico City, Istanbul, Nairobi, Karachi and Kabul, could fast be approaching 'Day...

Bangladesh is one of the countries most affected by global warming with a large and growing population and a lot of low lying land. Like other heavily populated river deltas around the world, the Ganges Delta, which also gathers in the waters of the...

Indonesia, a country of over 14,000 islands where almost one in ten workers is employed in the tourism industry, has every reason to be worried about the exponential growth of plastic waste that is floating in its rivers and into the sea, washing up...

From December to March the frozen waters of what remains of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan's vast western desert play host to a strange ritual; Wooly camels slowly wander through the snowy landscape dragging nets or sleighs laden with fish. They are the ...

This photographic journey across four states in the souther USA is an attempt to capture the enormous impact that cars have had on modern life. America, the home of the mass produced motorcar, is the most striking embodiment of our love affair with ...

On 18 February 2017 US President Donald Trump gave a speech in Melbourne, Florida. While speaking about the importance of keeping America safe his speech digressed into talking about Sweden. 'You look at what's happening last night in Sweden. ...

The Aleutian Islands are a sweeping, 1,900 kilometre long archipelago of volcanic islands that stretch from the Alaskan Peninsula to within 190 kilometres of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. Until America's Alaska Purchase in 1867, the island chain was...