With its tuxedo plumage and clumsy, waddling gait, the African penguin, spheniscus demersus, has long been an iconic presence at the southern tip of Africa. In past centuries, it is thought that penguins were the country's most numerous seabird, with a ...

'Astana is no more, long live Nur-Sultan' An artificial city in the steppe, to the glory of the eponymous president, where futuristic bling clashes with sleepy Soviet decay. When he moved the Kazakh capital from mountainous Almaty to Aqmola, ...

For almost two years, countries across the world have imposed a host of restrictions on daily life to combat the spread of Covid-19, confining people to their homes and closing restaurants and bars. What people haven't been able to consume in public ...

Vending machines are a ubiquitous feature of urban life in Japan. A specific type of outlet, known as gachapon, has been selling toys enclosed in plastic capsules to children for decades, often themed around cartoon and video game characters, allowing ...

Women and Afro Spirituality in Ecuador In Ecuador today, the daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters of black women who survived slavery keep their African roots alive in their spirituality. The diaspora's ancestral rituals and their cultural...

The Collapse - I first arrived in Moscow in the spring of 1990 after covering the fall of the Berlin Wall, Czechoslovakia's Velvet revolution and the aftermath of the Ceausescu era in Romania the previous year. The collapse of communist regimes across ...

Russian portraits - In 1996 I returned to Russia during the presidential elections. The country was at a crossroads between its Communist past and pushing ahead with Yeltsin's free market reforms that were benefitting some but leaving many others behind....

The Party - The mid to late 90s were a time of hardship for most Russians as the radical economic changes taking place brought high inflation and the loss of old social safety nets. This situation was inherited by Putin when he became acting president ...

In advance of the 30th anniversary of the independence of Kazakhstan from the former Soviet Union, Mario Heller took a 7,500 km train journey around the country, spending 225 hours over 17 days on Kazakh railways. The State railway company is the ...

Once more, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Western countries find themselves at an impasse. Over the long history of discord and conflict, however, the present situation appears more intractable than ever. Following the assassination of Qasem Soleimani,...

I was shocked when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan again this summer and these images are about Afghan women losing their identity. As a documentary photographer it has always been important for me to know who Im photographing; to talk to ...

Earth Songs explores and celebrates spiritual connections to the land in South Africa. While the ownership of 'land' in South Africa is a highly contested issue, people have long marked and celebrated their spiritual connections to the land in ways that ...

The halal-friendly tourism industry is the fastest growing travel sector. For observant Muslims looking for a package holiday in the sun, the halal holiday market caters for the rules governing daily life in Islam. These niche hotels and resorts are ...

In March 2020 Britain went into national lockdown, along with much of the rest of the world. Together with many other Covid restrictions, the various modes of travel and leisure to which people had become accustomed were suddenly no longer possible. From...

Housed in a historic, Hogwartsesque mansion complete with hidden doorways and creaking staircases, the Cape Town College of Magic offers a space where students from every part of this rigidly divided city can come together to learn the art of wizardry....

Borno State in northeastern Nigeria is at the epicentre of a humanitarian crisis that has seen almost two million people leave their homes and seek safety in temporary camps. Since 2009 Boko Haram, an Islamist group which has been fighting the Nigerian ...

On 29 August 1949, four years after the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, the Soviets launched 'Operation First Lightning' at a secret location in the steppes of eastern Kazakhstan. Over the next 42 years the Soviet Union's nuclear programme ...

On February 1st 2021 Myanmar's Armed Forces brought a decade-long experiment in limited democracy to a sudden and violent end. The country has been reeling from the consequences ever since. A Panos photographer, whose name is being withheld to protect...

As the sun sets into the turquoise sea off the coast of Madagascar, giant baobab trees stand silhouetted against glittering stars and rare animals like the lemur begin their nightly activity. Villagers across one of the world's most uniquely biodiverse ...

No place are the growing tensions between East and West more violent and more apparent than along the 400 kilometer frontline that divides Ukraine from the the Russian-backed separatists in the country's eastern Donbass region. When Ukraine pivoted ...

The journey wasn't for the faint-hearted. Panos photographer Ian Teh and National Geographic journalist Craig Welch, accompanying a team of scientists, had flown to the last airport on the southern tip of South America, spent 32 hours on a ferry, then 10...

Gan Xiqi, or Nai Nai as she is known to her tens of thousands of fans, was a minor internet sensation in China, the world's most crowded social media environment. From 2018 until early 2020 the recent arrival in Shanghai, originally from Nanchang in ...

This summer will mark 10 years since the terrorist attack in Oslo and on Utoya island on July 22, 2011. A total of 77 people were killed. Of these, the majority of the victims on Utoya were children and youths. After the incident, a report carried out by...

Relatively sheltered from the ravages of Covid-19, Australia has been experiencing a series of natural disasters over the past years that have stunned locals with their ferocity and intensified the debate about the effects of climate change on the Red ...

October 2021 is the 10th anniversary of London's manifestation of the Occupy movement which started on Wall Street in New York and spread to 950 cities in 82 countries. On the 15th October 2011, protestors representing the global Occupy movement set ...

From central Asia's grasslands to the shores of the Mediterranean, a rich culture of nomadic 'sports', often drawn from hunting, fighting or simply surviving in an unforgiving environment, is shared by people from across the region spanning from China's ...

Until the 1970s, Afghanistan was a relatively peaceful country and a popular stop-over on the hippie trail. All that changed in 1979 with the Soviet invasion that left hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, dead and caused a third of the population to...

Situated in the Ghanaian city of Kumasi, the sprawling commercial hub of Kejetia Market is West Africa's answer to Amazon and Walmart combined. Among the more than 10,000 stalls that sit clustered together below an ocean of corrugated iron roofs you can ...

In June 2012, US president Barack Obama announced a radical new policy to deal with one of the country's most vexing problems - the presence of millions of undocumented migrants living in the shadows but constituting a vital part of the American economy....

The Amazon rainforest is often referred to the "lungs of the earth", absorbing tonnes of carbon dioxide and in turn producing some 20% of the earth's oxygen. It is also the most biodiverse region on the planet, home to some three million ...

Walking for hours under a blazing sun to sell mangoes, spending 12 to 13 hours a day repairing flat tyres or breaking rocks in a quarry - Emilienne (13), Roger (13) and Marc (15) never imagined that they would have to provide meals for their families ...

Mads Nissen's series on the Covid 19 crisis in Brazil from which the World Press Photo of the Year 2021 was selected. Mads talked to us about how he came to take the winning image. In March 2020, care homes across Brazil closed their doors to all ...

The Songor lagoon, 80 km east of Ghana's capital Accra, is the source of some 150,000 to 200,000 tonnes of salt a year. It is both a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and home to around 60,000 people who depend on salt and fishing for their livelihoods. ...

'He is obviously not a war photographer but nor is he a photographer of peace. Martin Roemers photographs the time between war and peace. He frequently arrives once the action has been and gone, at a point when the situation is still fragile and ...

The desert city of Agadez in central Niger, once infamous as an entrepot for migrants and refugees making their way north toward Libya and the dream of a new life in Europe, has now become the centre of a gold rush sweeping the Sahara. Itinerant ...

I grew up in a village right on the edge of Birmingham. It is the type of nondescript commuter settlement familiar to the majority of the UK's population who live in the suburbs. When I was 4 years old, the horse pastures to the east of my infant school ...