'At the beginning of the year I visited Tokyo to work on a small project of portraits of commuters. Little did I know about the terrible events that would befall Japan two months later. The idea was to produce a series of observations of people going...


Once a sleepy backwater of the communist bloc, Mongolia is now host to the biggest resource bonanza in the world. Deep within its soil lie some of the largest un-tapped deposits of coal and mineral wealth in the world. Now it is opening its doors ...


El Salvador has been the second most murderous country in the world for a number of years. Though still overshadowed by Honduras' prolific record in violent death, the violence is usually linked to the vile legacy of a 12 year civil war that ended in...


The advantages of China's huge Three Gorges Dam are as great in the eyes of its builders as are the disadvantages in the eyes of its critics. Proponents say the $30 billion edifice will tame the dangerous Yangtze, which regularly bursts its banks, ...


The 53rd Vuelta a Colombia took place against a backdrop of civil war and violence. The bicycle race is guarded along its entire route by heavily armed Colombian soldiers as it crosses provinces controlled variously by the Revolutionary Army of Colombia...


The baseball stadium is full. Everybody from the small coastal city of Baracoa seems to have turned out for the opening ceremony of the 43rd Vuelta a Cuba, the island's answer to the Tour de France. In Soviet style, the riders are honoured for their ...


The Lord's Resistance Army, which claims to be fighting for a state ruled according to the Ten Commandments, has terrorised the northern provinces of Uganda since 1987, abducting 20,000 children and forcing 1.6 million people to flee their homes. ...


Since splitting from Africa and India, the island of Madagascar has been geographically distinct for about 70 million years. This has put it on a different evolutionary course resulting in an incredible diversity of flora and fauna, much of it ...


Sourcing fuel has been a major problem for the 106,000 Bhutanese refugees living in southern Nepal. The forests in the Jhapa and Morang districts where they live could never sustainably provide the firewood needs of such a large population, and until ...


HIV has swept through communities in South Africa, changing the shape of the family as mothers and fathers die from AIDS. The impact on children is dramatic, but too often those affected by AIDS and poverty become invisible to the wider community and the...


In North-Eastern Kenya a humanitarian disaster is taking place. Each month, thousands of refugees cross the border from neighbouring Somalia to escape the ongoing violence and desperate living conditions in that benighted country. There is one road ...


Following the departure of Tunisia's strongman Zine El Abedine Ben Ali in early January and the drawn-out showdown between President Mubarak and anti-government protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square, on 17 February 2011 it was Libya's turn. After ...


Once the most stable and prosperous of West African nations, Cote d'Ivoire has seen in the 21st century with a series of internal conflicts following a coup against the then president Henri Bedi in 1999. As in so many other parts of Africa, ethnicity...


What would you do if the place you call home was torn apart by violence? How would you cope if floods or drought destroyed your crops and your family went hungry? If you had to flee suddenly, what would you take with you? Working in partnership with ...


In the barren plains of northern Jordan, just 10 miles from the Syrian border, lies the Zaatari refugee camp where close to 150,000 Syrians have found shelter after fleeing across the border from their homeland which has been gripped by one of the ...


As Britain commemorated 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade, Panos produced an exhibition to reveal how human trafficking is a bitter reality for thousands of women, men and children in the UK today. Slave Britain artfully documents the ...


How can you cut your carbon footprint by half? It might seem impossible, but take a short ferry ride from the centre of Stockholm and you may just find the answer. The district of Hammarby Sjostad, a former brownfield site on the edge of a lake, is fast ...


As the UK prepared for a general election on May 6th widely seen as the most important in a generation, party leaders criss-crossed the country in search of votes. Wherever they went, a Panos photographer was not far behind. This is a selection of ...


Paul Weinberg conceived and curated the exhibition Then & Now for the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. It featured the work of eight South African documentary photographers, all of whom were associated with the legendary ...


For centuries the Indian sub-continent has been the last redoubt of the hirsute; a reliquary for the beards and moustaches of epochs past. Not so long ago every Indian office, factory or farm had its collection of Soup Strainers, French Forks, Recumbent ...


It's an apocalyptic scene. As far as the eye can see stretches a flattened landscape sodden with cracked mud. Zigzagging pathways of rocks and roof tiles laid down by former residents indicate where it is safe to walk. The jagged remains of crumbling ...


Surrounding the gritty industrial town of Dhanbad is a region rich in coal, vital to India's burgeoning energy and steel industries. Entire communities of scavengers scratch a living recycling leftover coal lumps, often found in the slag dumped by ...


In the winter months of December and January, when the plains of North India are awash with fog and icy winds, the country's wedding season reaches full fury. The colour and vibrancy of these events - which often last for days - are increasingly becoming...


Known as the "Spanish Chinatown" and omprising around 800 factories covering 1.5 million square metres, the Cobo Calleja industrial zone in Fuenlabrada on the outskirts of Madrid is the largest Chinese wholesale hub in Europe, raking in around 870 ...


Fiercely independent and historically at odds with the central authorities in Jakarta, Aceh is now classified as a Special Region of Indonesia. It is overwhelmingly Muslim and has become the first province of this vast and mainly religiously ...


As Calcutta was to the British Empire, so the tiny and distant island of Ambon was to the Dutch. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) made this the base of its administration and favoured the Ambonese in their civil service due to the island's ...


Imagine a proudly independent, mist-shrouded island nation, a country of tinkering backyard inventors, small-scale industrial manufacturers, shopkeepers and farmers. A nation home to a vibrant Baby Boom generation with money to spend on leisure ...


Photographer and filmmaker Martin Adler witnessed excessive and disproportionate use of force while embedded with Charlie Company, an American combat unit of the 4th Infantry Division, in Iraq in December 2003. He also uncovered the systematic taking of ...


'For ten years they did not let us breathe' Chechen civilian, 2004. On New Year's Eve 1994, Russian forces invaded Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, igniting a fierce resistance that eventually forced troops to withdraw two years later. In 1999, the ...


Our colleague Martin Adler was killed in Mogadishu on the 23rd of June 2006. He was filming a demonstration when a lone gunman came out of the crowd and shot him at close range. Martin was one of the longest serving members of Panos Pictures, and was a ...


Martin Adler's reporting from the civil war in Liberia in 2003 remains a highlight in his career. Almost alone throughout the weeks of heavy fighting between Charles Taylor's child soldiers and the equally young rebel groups, Martin witnessed both ...


It is 10 years on 7 October 2011 since the beginning of the War in Afghanistan. Precipitated by the terrorist attacks on NY and Washington on 11 November that year, the Taliban regime in power in Afghanistan at the time was quickly toppled by the ...


A one-year-old Nenet nomad will have crossed rivers, braved storms and traversed 1,000 miles of terrain - a journey they will make every year for the rest of their lives as they follow their reindeer across Siberia's Yamal peninsula. 'For us, deer is ...


History has come full circle for South Africa's witkaffers - white Negroes. At the turn of the previous century, many Afrikaners lost everything in the Boer War and had to compete with Blacks for low-paid jobs. They were saved by 'positive ...


Religion has become a flourishing business in poverty-stricken Kinshasa, capital of Democratic Republic of Congo, with scores of pentecostal churches springing up in recent years. They promise miracles but deliver little to alleviate worshippers' ...


There is a proverb saying that the Cantonese eat everything on 4 legs except for a table and a chair and everything that flies except for an aeroplane. Dong Wan animal market, in the West of Canton, is the place where the Cantonese get their exotic meat:...