From a Hindu temple in southern India to the smartest salons in the West, the lucrative trade in human hair traverses the globe. It is traditional for Hindus to have their heads shaved at a temple at least once in a lifetime. At Tirumala Tirupati ...
In 2006, five countries in East Africa suffered their worst drought in over a decade. Years of low rainfall in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti were exacerbated by the almost complete failure of the rainy season expected at the end of 2005....
A dry bed scattered with shells and rusting ships is all that remains of a formerly bustling harbour in what was once the world's fourth-largest inland sea. The Soviet Union decided in 1918 that the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and the...
Tanzania's albinos are stalked by cancer, stigmatisation and murder. Albinism is a genetic condition with a recessive inheritance that causes little or no pigmentation in people's eyes, skin or hair. Their lack of melanin means albinos have sandy ...
'Just because they are living in isolation does not give us the right to let them down.' This simple principle drives Friar Richard Hardi, an ophthalmologist based in Mbuji Mayi in the centre of the DR Congo, to venture into some of the remotest ...
For minorities in the new Kosovo, the future is uncertain. In a population of 1.9 million at the end of 2006, around 90% were ethnically Albanian, 6% Serb, 2% Muslim Slavs, with the remainder Roma, Ashkali, Egyptians and Turks. In some instances, notably...
The Moken, a nomadic tribe of sea gypsies who live on the Surin Islands off the western coast of Thailand, survived the South Asian tsunami thanks to a low-tech 'early warning system' based on wisdom passed down through the generations. Elders urged the ...
In the space of six days in July 1995, almost 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were systematically massacred by Serb forces in and around the town of Srebrenica. Infamously, Dutch peacekeeping troops and the wider international community failed to ...
In July 2007 Andrew Testa won the Amnesty International Media Award for Photojournalism for his story on the victims of acid attacks in Bangladesh. The feature was commissioned by Germany's Brigitte magazine and published in the UK by Ei8ht magazine. ...
At the end of the Kosovo war in June 1999, 5,206 people were reported missing by their families. The vast majority were ethnic Albanian civilians killed by Serbian soldiers, police and paramilitaries during the war. Over the next seven years the bodies ...
As Kosovo moves towards statehood, Andrew Testa has embarked on a new project. His aim is to explore the different landscapes of a country which is on the brink of a new start, but which remains scarred by ghosts of the past....
All orthodox Jews who live according to the Torah and Talmud should eat kosher food. But the rules are contradictory. Which fish is pure and which isn't? In America those who want to be on the safe side look out for the seal of approval given by the New ...
Kosovo unilaterally declared independence on the 17th of February 2008, thus completing a long and difficult journey towards statehood. Since the end of the war in 1999 Kosovo had been in diplomatic limbo, technically still a province of Serbia but ...
Louisiana's Angola state penitentiary, once described as 'the bloodiest prison in America' by Time magazine, is an unlikely setting for a rodeo. Home to 5,200 murderers, rapists and other violent criminals, it gained notoriety when 40 prisoners were ...
'Babies, guns, Jesus. Hot damn!'Rush Limbaugh, right-wing radio host, commenting on Sarah Palin's attributes.In a rollercoaster ride which began with her nomination as the Republican candidate for vice president at the end of August 2008, Alaska governor...
At fourteen, Tom Hanley had a part alongside Marlon Brando in 'On the Waterfront'. He played Tommy, the boy who helps Brando's Terry Malloy look after his beloved pigeons. The film's portrayal of corruption, extortion and racketeering on the Hoboken ...
On November 4th 2008, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The following is an excerpt from his acceptance speech in Grant Park, Chicago:'If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are ...
Controversial tactics used by London's Metropolitan Police during demonstrations are to be reviewed following the G20 summit held in the city in April 2009. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) received seventy complaints that officers had...
'It's easy to hide successfully when nobody wants to find you,' an associate of Radovan Karadzic explained with a wry smile. Former Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic was arrested by the Serbian authorities in July 2008 and yet his fellow fugitive, ...
The highlight of every English summer, Wimbledon has become a draw for tens of thousands of spectators over a bustling two weeks in June and July. The venue - the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club - in London's leafy southwestern suburbs, was ...
London-based artist Ben Wilson (47) has chosen a most unusual space to be his atelier, come rain or shine: the city's streets. And he doesn't need to bring his own canvasses to indulge in his passion. They are provided by friendly Londoners who are ...
The photographs shown here were taken over the course of 18 months from the windows of Andrew Testa's apartment in Muswell Hill, a leafy north London suburb. They are mostly taken on weekend nights between the hours of 1.00am to 4.00am when pubgoers...
The horrendous wars during the breakup of Yugoslavia made the Balkans a byword for ethnic fragmentation and inter-communal strife. Most recently, Kosovo's declaration of independence in 2008 has seen yet another chunk break away from Serbia, formerly...
According to an Icelandic saga, Erik Thorvaldsson, a man who had been exiled from Iceland for murder around the year 982 AD, sailed West with his family and a small band of followers and established a settlement on a large island in the sea to the ...
Iceland is an odd place in many ways. A windswept land of a mere 320,000 inhabitants, each of whom would have a whole 3.1 square kilometre to themselves if they spread out evenly. Icelanders are known for the environmental conscience, producing a ...
Though his exploits take him all over the globe and to some of the most dangerous places on earth, James Bond (or 007 as he's known to his handlers back at MI6) always returns back to London to debrief, recoup, unwind and receive a new set of ...
On Canada's exposed and windswept Novia Scotia coast in small fishing communities like the town of Sambro, a few experienced fishermen are keeping alive the waning craft of fishing for swordfish using harpoons. Sambro is the home of Harold ...
In the country where he served two and a half terms as prime minister, it is hard to find anyone who has a good thing to say about him. Yet in a small corner of the Balkans, Tony Blair remains a hero to many, having played midwife to a country's slow...
During the course of the Vietnam war between 1961 and 1971 the American armed forces instituted a program of herbicidal warfare, spraying defoliants from the air in an attempt to deprive the enemy forces of shelter and hidden supply routes in the ...
There are forty four huts in the village of Dickson, and some two hundred and fifty inhabitants. The village is just seventy five kilometres along a dirt road from Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, but none of the villagers have been to the city for over ...
This project hones in on the typically anonymous civil servant who, anywhere in the world, makes up a small cog in the gigantic machinery of the state. Jan Banning and writer Will Tinnemans photographed and interviewed approximately 250 civil servants in...
In every large-scale armed conflict, women are victims of sexual violence. In most cases this is kept quiet - by victims, perpetrators and government leaders. The taboo is persistent. Jan Banning and I discovered as much during our quest to find ...
East Asia was one of the most brutal killing grounds of World War II. The conflict there destroyed millions of lives and left those who remained with legacies of grief and bitterness that in many cases lasted decades. Among the least-heard voices ...
'Down and Out in the South' is a portrait series of homeless men and women Jan Banning encountered in South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi in 2010 and 2011. The project started in September 2010, when the 701 Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) in ...
Over the past few summers massive bush fires have engulfed large tracts of the Australian outback, increasingly encroaching on residential areas. Dean Sewell won a World Press Photo award for these stunning images of bush fires around Sydney and ...
'One shot, one kill, no fear.' Antonio's fighting abilities were beyond doubt; the thirteen-year-old had already killed at least three Burmese soldiers. His toothless commanding officer was clearly pleased with the teenager's discipline during ...