Rikuzentakata's seafront was once regarded as one of the most scenic in Japan, with the golden sands of its two kilometer-long beach separating the clear blue waters of the Pacific Ocean from its famous forest of an estimated seventy thousand pine ...
On Friday 11 March 2011, as the end of the working week approached, most people in Japan would have been looking forward to a late winter's weekend; many students would have been celebrating the approaching end to the academic year. Then, at 2:46 in ...
On her fifth visit to Afghanistan, Iva Zimova took a series of portraits. Her subjects were rural people: farmers, beekeepers, vendors and policemen in the country's northern provinces. We present the pictures alongside extracts from her letters ...
Christien's photo essay on the annual 'fete de crepissage', the ritual refurbishment of the Grand Mosque in Djenne is a unique record of this event. The festival has no fixed date. It is dependent on the elders of the community deciding when the mud in ...
The Ottoman Empire is long gone but its cultural legacy lives on in the hammans - Turkish baths - that Islamic architects built across its former lands. In cities such as Cairo, Budapest and, of course, Istanbul, bathgoers can luxuriate in the unique ...
An estimated 246 million children are engaged in child labour. Of those, almost three-quarters (171 million) work in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with ...
The Al-Nour wal Amal Associaton is a centre for blind women and girls. Its name translates as 'Light and Hope'. The association runs two orchestras, with roughly 35 members each, which have performed across Egypt and abroad....
'What do you dream of?' That is the question Fernando Moleres asked of the people he met and photographed in Iran as the country celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution. He sought out the young, those born after the revolution...
Known to most of the world's major religions, the idea of monasticism is characterised by a renunciation of worldly endeavours and a complete devotion to spirituality and prayer. Derived from the Greek word monos (alone), monasticism originally ...
The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria is the largest Christian Church in Egypt and the Middle East and has existed as a separate entity since the council of Chalcedon in 451 AD when it diverged from the main Eastern Orthodox Church on intricate ...
For some years now, Sierra Leone has stayed off the front pages of the newspapers. People are slowly and arduously rebuilding their country after one of the most savage civil wars in living memory, infamous for the practice of amputation as a means ...
Fernando Moleres met the young men portrayed in these images in the notorious Freetown Central Prison, commonly known as Pademba Road Prison. At the time the juveniles were serving time alongside up to 1,300 adult prisoners in appalling conditions. ...
"Come, dear children, run this Palio and run it so that only one can possess it"Saint Catherine of SienaTwice each summer, the main piazza of the medieval Tuscan town of Siena is transformed into a dirt racetrack for the most passionately contested ...
On the 9th October 2003 Anna Vollaro doused herself in petrol and set fire to herself in a last desperate attempt to prevent the police seizing property belonging to the 'camorra' clan of her uncle, Luigi Vollaro, controller of western Naples. On the ...
Photographing a wedding in Naples has more in a common with a Hollywood film shoot than a family affair. Although bride and groom are the leading 'actors', family members are drafted in to act as extras evoking the Roman Empire. Centurions, armour, ...
One day early in 1999, as Serb forces closed in on the Kosovan village of Studenica, its residents embarked on a mass exodus. Abandoning their homes, the entire population trekked across the snow-covered mountains into Montenegro in a desperate attempt ...
Travelling by bus, trolleybus, tram and train, George Georgiou takes us on a journey around the outer limits of urban Ukraine. These places, away from the city centre, offer a glimpse into the daily lives of Ukrainians: moving from home to work, buying ...
'Clean Monday' marks the end of Carnival and the start of Lent, the 40 day period of abstinence leading up to Easter. The people of Galaxidi, about 220km west of Athens, mark the occasion with a flour-throwing festival, a tradition that dates back to the...
After the fall from power of Slobodan Milosevic, a promise was made to the people of Serbia that their nation could rejoin the international community, ending a long period of isolation. But when he lived in Belgrade in 2001 and 2002, what George ...
Kukes, in northern Albania, was the first point of refuge for hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing Kosovo in the spring of 1999. A year later, this led to it becoming the first ever town to be nominated for the Nobel Peace prize. It ...
In the wake of the NATO bombing of Serb forces in 1999, ethnic Albanian refugees began to return to Kosovo. As they buried the dead and started to rebuild their homes, their former neighbours from the Serb and Roma communities faced up to a hostile and ...
In late 2003, Georgia's 'Rose revolution' brought the promise of an open, free and democratic future. In the years since, the new government has faced increasing hostility from its giant neighbour Russia.This has been manifested in many ways, including ...
Turkey is a strategically important nation, poised geographically and symbolically between Europe and Asia. But the tensions at its heart are becoming increasingly severe. A fierce struggle is taking place between modernity and tradition, secularism and ...
'In 2008 I returned to London having spent the last nine years living and working in Eastern Europe and Turkey and was surprised by the speed of change that had taken place. I wanted to document the city, its movements and migrations, its landscape ...
These photographs were taken in the middle of Taksim Square, the heart of modern Istanbul. The word Taksim has its origins in the Arabic word for distribution or division. That is reflected in the diversity of people that one sees passing through ...
Immigration is a divisive topic in Europe - and Britain is no different. Though probably less vociferous than in countries like Denmark or the Netherlands, anti-immigrant voices in Britain have been calling on caps on immigration and more stringent ...
On January 20th 2009 Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. Before a crowd of more than a million in Washington DC, Obama became the first African-American to take command of a nation founded by slaveholders. This is an ...
Commissioned by the Nature Conservancy, one of the leading conservation organisations working to preserve ecologically vital waters and lands for nature and people, Ami Vitale travelled to the US states of Alaska, Maine and Idaho and to the Marshall ...
The Thelon Wildlife Sanctuary which straddles the border between Canada's Northwest Territories and Nanavut is the largest wildlife refuge in Canada, covering over 52,000 square kilometres, an area twice the size of Belgium. This shrubby, almost ...
All over the flat and sparse Great Hungarian Plain (or Alföld), hundreds of hot springs gush out of the ground. Hungary is one of the most geothermally active regions in the world, with over 150 hot water spas and the largest active medicinal ...
While the damage done to the environment by burning coal is a hotly debated topic that has become even mere pressing with the breakneck growth of developing economies like China and India, the effect it has on people across the United States and ...
A decade after Michael Pollan wrote his landmark article 'Power Steer' it appears that not much has changed in U.S. beef production, although a movement for healthier, more ethical food has certainly grown. In the Centennial Valley, the variety of...
Timbuktu, on the south western edge of the Sahara desert, has an illustrious history as a centre of trade and learning dating back to 13th century. Tens of thousands of manuscripts covering everything from astrology to medicine have been kept in the ...
Professional European cyclists with gleaming bicycles and fully equipped back-up teams compete with locals on rickety 30-year-old bikes in Africa's best-known cycle race, the 1,300 kilometre Tour du Faso. Temperatures that can hit 40 degrees Celsius make...
Starting in the capital Dakar, the Tour du Senegal takes in much of the country, both rural and urban, in temperatures which rise as high as 47 degrees Celsius. The field is split between African entrants, many from Senegal itself, and riders from ...
Eritrea's passion for cycling is one of many lasting influences of Italian colonial rule. The country's first multi-day cycle race was staged in 1946, although locals were not allowed to enter. The Giro was resurrected fifty-five years later, a symbol of...