25 h. ago ‘I love humans – it gives me the courage to approach them’: the disarming work of Mao Ishikawa

For five decades the Japanese photographer has captured the internal lives of a host of unlikely subjects, from dockers to Black GIs. Now a new show celebrates an artist dedicated to documenting the underdogIn 1975, when Mao Ishikawa was in her early 20s, she took a job in a bar frequented by Black American GIs stationed at Camp Hansen, in Okinawa. She had grown up hating the Americans who controlled her home island and, to this day, maintain military bases there. Yet she found kindred spirits among the soldiers and her fellow barmaids, with whom she lived and loved and also photographed. These images became her first major documentary series, Red Flower: The Women of Okinawa, and capture a sense of their youthful freedom and outsider bonhomie, from the group of men and women hanging out in bed to the trio hitting the town for a night out, the women’s hair teased into afros, massive hoop earrings glinting.Like much of what you can discover in Ishikawa’s first UK surve...

Politics

39 h. ago AP PHOTOS: Iconic images of Pope Francis' procession captured by AP photographer

Emilio Morenatti, chief photographer in Spain for The Associated Press, arrived in St. Peter’s Square before sunrise to wait for Pope Francis’ casket to pass through the crowd and into St. Peter’s Basilica

Culture

41 h. ago Inside the world of ‘skimpies’: the barmaids in bras who pour pints in Australia’s mining towns

Most skimpy bars have signs that say ‘no photos of the girls’ – but photographer M Ellen Burns earned the women’s trust to capture what their life is really likeGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailNot long after M Ellen Burns arrived in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, the state’s borders closed to the rest of Australia and the world for the first time in history. The photographer had been on a road trip from the Blue Mountains to visit her partner’s parents in WA when Covid-19 first began to spread; now she was well and truly stuck. She found work shooting for the town’s tourist board, but a chance meeting with a local barmaid introduced her to the other jewels in Kalgoorlie’s crown: skimpy bars.Burns photographed several skimpies at work between 2021 and 2023 with their full consent Continue reading...

Politics

48 h. ago AP PHOTOS: Procession begins to transfer the body of Pope Francis

A procession to move the body of Pope Francis to St. Peter’s Basilica for three days of public mourning began Wednesday morning. The Argentine pontiff is remembered for his humble style, concern for the poor and insistent prayers for peace.

Culture

53 h. ago New Jersey wildfire: Residents evacuated as huge blaze tears through community 'like a war zone'

Shocking photographs capture flames roar from buildings in Barnegat Township, New Jersey, where wildfires have burned throughout Tuesday - and authorities are concerned

Events

3 d. ago When is Conclave and how will it work? Process to select new Pope to begin

The method the Catholic Church uses to select their leader has remained virtually unchanged for the last 800 years

Politics

3 d. ago Cardinals to meet in Rome in preparation for funeral of Pope Francis

Funeral should be held between the fourth and sixth days after the pope’s death, with heads of state and royalty expected to attendCardinals will meet on Tuesday to decide the date for Pope Francis’s funeral, starting a process that will culminate in the election of a new Catholic leader.The pope, the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, died at his home in the Vatican on Monday aged 88 after suffering a stroke. He had been recovering from double pneumonia that saw him hospitalised for five weeks. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago ‘A signal of simplicity’: Pope Francis’s funeral will be his final humble gesture

One of pontiff’s last acts was to simplify papal rites, stripping away elaborate rituals and scaling back processionLatest updates: tributes paid after Pope Francis dies aged 88When the late Pope Francis stepped on to the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica to give his first speech as leader of the Catholic church in March 2013, he cast away formality by dressing in simple white robes instead of the regal ermine-trimmed cape usually worn by newly elected pontiffs.The next day, Francis – a name chosen in honour of Francis of Assisi, the Italian saint who renounced a life of luxury to help the poor – returned to the Rome hotel in which he had stayed before the conclave to pick up his luggage and pay his bill. He substituted a plush apostolic apartment for a simple room within the Vatican walls and, unlike his predecessors, did not spend his summers in Castel Gandolfo, an opulent 12th-century fortress close to Rome. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago What is a Conclave? Process to select a Pope explained after Francis death

The method the Catholic Church uses to select their leader has remained virtually unchanged for the last 800 years

Events

3 d. ago What happens now after Pope Francis death? Period of mourning and how new Catholic leader is picked

How the Catholic community will mourn Pope Francis, funeral details and the process of selecting a new leader explained

Politics

5 d. ago The big picture: Wolfgang Tillmans’s tender image of two boys off the coast of Denmark

The German photographer captures a moment of tranquility one Scandinavian summer“Who has known the ocean?” asked the pioneering American marine biologist, conservationist and writer Rachel Carson in her groundbreaking essay Undersea, published in the Atlantic in 1937. With our “earth-bound senses”, neither you nor I can grasp how profoundly the ocean is a place of paradoxes. It is shallow and deep, light and dark, placid and chaotic, benign and dangerous – filled with surprise and, possibly overall, beauty. For this reason, Carson observed, “no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry”.The same is perhaps true of visually representing the ocean, from prints to films to multimedia installations. A new book, Ocean, accompanies a sprawling group show at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, a country in which one is never more than 32 miles (about 51 kilometres) from the sea – the fluid, changeable body laps at every just-distant horizon. Ann...

Events

5 d. ago ‘This trick is incredibly risky for him’: Ankit Ghosh’s best phone picture

The Indian photographer captures his neighbour breathing fire at the finale of a major Hindu festivalIn a narrow lane in Kolkata, West Bengal, Ankit Ghosh paused for a moment to take this photo. Ghosh was among crowds attending Vijaya Dashami, the last day of the Durga Puja, a festival he describes as “cultural potpourri”. He says, “It’s celebrated all across India, but there is no other place to experience it better than West Bengal. As this was the grand finale, the atmosphere was one of joy, pride and celebration.”The man in the photo is Ghosh’s neighbour. “He’s a fine performer of this trick, which you don’t see very often; it is generally saved up for special festivals and celebrations,” Ghosh says. “The liquid in the air is kerosene [paraffin], which is spat upwards through a lit matchstick to create these cloudy flames. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago Faintings, blackouts and violence: Iraq’s scorching emergency – in pictures

The country’s average temperature has risen by 0.48C a decade from 2000. Last August, photographer Susan Schulman visited Baghdad and Amarah, to capture the impact of extreme weather on everyday lives Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago ‘Too original for just one medium’: Agnès Varda’s Paris photographs go on show

The esteemed film director began as a photographer, capturing the postwar freedom of Paris – where a new exhibition at the Musée Carnavalet now presents her as a vital part of the city’s creative historyThe French cinéaste Agnès Varda, who died in 2019 at the age of 90, had many lives. Initially a photographer, she broke through as a film-maker with Cléo from 5 to 7 in 1962, and then reinvented herself in her late 70s with art installations that toured the world’s most prestigious contemporary exhibition spaces, from the Venice Biennale to the Los Angeles Museum. Her last film documentaries such as the autobiographical Les plages d’Agnès (2008) and Visages, Villages (2017) reaped awards worldwide.The elf-looking gamine with her eternal short bob and soft melodious voice showed through her life a formidable determination, imposing herself in a man’s world. Today, Varda is a French monument. So much so that her work is now exhibited for the first time in one of Paris’s most iconic and...

Culture

2 w. ago No Iconic Images: visualising wars around the world – in pictures

The Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool has recently opened a unique exhibition, No Iconic Images, in partnership with the Guardian and Magnum Photos. The exhibition visualises the editorial decisions made by Guardian news picture editors when selecting conflict images, displays work by a new generation of Magnum photographers and also presents the investigation by Forensic Architecture and the Centre for Spatial Technologies on the 2022 attack on the Kyiv TV tower. Here are a few examples of the work on display Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Here are the 11 most photogenic landscapes in Scotland as Highlands ranked top in UK

Scotland is a beautiful country, so it’s no surprise that the Highlands were found to be the most popular landscape captured by photographers in the UK.

Culture

4 w. ago National Trust photo competition: Young photographers invited to capture UK wildlife for staycation prize

Young photographers are being invited to share their best snaps of nature - for the chance to win a staycation.

Culture