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 ...
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 ...