"Why we protest" - Mohammed Zaanoun

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed since the launch of the Great March of Return along Gaza’s boundary with Israel on 30 March 2018.

Palestinians participating in the protest series are demanding their right to return to the lands on the other side of the boundary from which their families were expelled decades earlier.

Every two in three Palestinians in Gaza is a refugee.

Protesters are also calling for an end to Israel’s land, sea and air blockade on Gaza, now in its 12th year, which has plunged the territory into poverty and despair.

Mohammed Zaanoun, a member of the Activestills photo collective, has documented the Great March of Return since its beginning.

Here protesters tell their stories and explain why they come back to the boundary week after week, despite Israel’s brutal crackdown.

"The Most Influential Images of All Time" - 28: David Guttenfelder

North Korea - David Guttenfelder

David Guttenfelder was chief photographer in Asia for the Associated Press when it became the first international news organization to open a bureau in North Korea. He started making frequent trips to the country, which had been largely off-limits to foreign journalists and virtually hidden from public view for nearly 60 years. Guttenfelder dutifully chronicled the official events and stage-managed pageants in Pyongyang, but his eye kept wandering to the scenes of daily life just beyond the guided tours. In early 2013, North Korea made a 3G connection available to foreigners, and suddenly Guttenfelder had the ability to share those glimpses with the world in real time. On January 18, 2013, he used his iPhone to post one of the first images to Instagram from inside the notoriously secretive country. “The window [into] North Korea has opened another crack,” he wrote on his widely followed account. “Meanwhile, for Koreans here who will not have access to the same service, the window remains shut.” By using the emerging technology of the sharing age, Guttenfelder opened one of the world’s most closed societies. He also inspired other visiting foreigners to do the same, creating a portrait of the monotony of everyday life not visible in mainstream coverage of the totalitarian state and bringing the outside world its clearest picture yet of North Korea.

Daqui

"The rise of Bolivia’s indigenous 'cholitas' – in pictures" - Eduardo Leal

As recently as 10 years ago, Bolivia’s indigenous Aymara and Quechua women were socially ostracised and systematically marginalised. Known as ‘cholitas’, these women, recognisable by their wide skirts, braided hair and bowler hats, were banned from using public transport and entering certain public spaces. Their career opportunities were severely limited. While these women have been organising and advocating their civil rights since at least the 1960s, their movement was invigorated by Evo Morales’ election as Bolivia’s first indigenous president in 2006.

In Cholita’s Rise, the photographer Eduardo Leal has created an exhibition of work that portrays their accomplishments and celebrates their success while also looking to inspire others.

"Documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis – in pictures" - Kevin Frayer

More than half a million Rohingya refugees have flooded into Bangladesh to flee an offensive by Myanmar’s military which the United Nations has called ‘a textbook example of ethnic cleansing’.

"The Most Influential Images of All Time" - 14: Abraham Zapruder

JFK Assassination, Frame 313 - Abraham Zapruder

It is the most famous home movie ever, and the most carefully studied image, an 8-millimeter film that captured the death of a President. The movie is just as well known for what many say it does or does not reveal, and its existence has fostered countless conspiracy theories about that day in Dallas. But no one would argue that what it shows is not utterly heartbreaking, the last moments of life of the youthful and charismatic John Fitzgerald Kennedy as he rode with his wife Jackie through Dealey Plaza. Amateur photographer Abraham Zapruder had eagerly set out with his Bell & Howell camera on the morning of November 22, 1963, to record the arrival of his hero. Yet as Zapruder filmed, one bullet struck Kennedy in the back, and as the President’s car passed in front of Zapruder, a second one hit him in the head. LIFE correspondent Richard Stolley bought the film the following day, and the magazine ran 31 of the 486 frames—which meant that the first public viewing of Zapruder’s famous film was as a series of still images. At the time, LIFE withheld the gruesome frame No. 313—a picture that became influential by its absence. That one, where the bullet exploded the side of Kennedy’s head, is still shocking when seen today, a reminder of the seeming suddenness of death. What Zapruder captured that sunny day would haunt him for the rest of his life. It is something that unsettles America, a dark dream that hovers at the back of our collective psyche, an image from a wisp of 26.5 seconds of film whose gut-wrenching impact reminds us how everything can change in a fraction of a moment.

"The Most Influential Images of All Time" - 14: Sam Shere

The Hindenburg Disaster - Sam Shere

Zeppelins were majestic skyliners, luxurious behemoths that signified wealth and power. The arrival of these ships was news, which is why Sam Shere of the International News Photos service was waiting in the rain at the Lakehurst, N.J., Naval Air Station on May 6, 1937, for the 804-foot-long LZ 129 Hindenburg to drift in from Frankfurt. Suddenly, as the assembled media watched, the grand ship’s flammable hydrogen caught fire, causing it to spectacularly burst into bright yellow flames and kill 36 people. Shere was one of nearly two dozen still and newsreel photographers who scrambled to document the fast-moving tragedy. But it is his image, with its stark immediacy and horrible grandeur, that has endured as the most famous—owing to its publication on front pages around the world and in LIFE and, more than three decades later, its use on the cover of the first Led Zeppelin album. The crash helped bring the age of the airships to a close, and Shere’s powerful photograph of one of the world’s most formative early air disasters persists as a cautionary reminder of how human fallibility can lead to death and destruction. Almost as famous as Shere’s photo is the anguished voice of Chicago radio announcer Herbert Morrison, who cried as he watched people tumbling through the air, “It is bursting into flames ... This is terrible. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the world ... Oh, the humanity!”

"The Most Influential Images of All Time" - 13: Lewis Hine

Cotton Mill Girl - Lewis Hine

Working as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, Lewis Hine believed that images of child labor would force citizens to demand change. The muckraker conned his way into mills and factories from Massachusetts to South Carolina by posing as a Bible seller, insurance agent or industrial photographer in order to tell the plight of nearly 2 million children. Carting around a large-format camera and jotting down information in a hidden notebook, Hine recorded children laboring in meatpacking houses, coal mines and canneries, and in November 1908 he came upon Sadie Pfeifer, who embodied the world he exposed. A 48-inch-tall wisp of a girl, she was “one of the many small children at work” manning a gargantuan cotton-­spinning machine in ­Lancaster, S.C. Since Hine often had to lie to get his shots, he made “double-sure that my photo data was 100% pure—no retouching or fakery of any kind.” His images of children as young as 8 dwarfed by the cogs of a cold, mechanized universe squarely set the horrors of child labor before the public, leading to regulatory legislation and cutting the number of child laborers nearly in half from 1910 to 1920.

"The Most Influential Images of All Time" - 12: John Dominis

Black Power Salute - John Dominis

The Olympics are intended to be a celebration of global unity. But when the American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos ascended the medal stand at the 1968 Games in Mexico City, they were determined to shatter the illusion that all was right in the world. Just before “The Star-Spangled Banner” began to play, Smith, the gold medalist, and Carlos, the bronze winner, bowed their heads and raised black-gloved fists in the air. Their message could not have been clearer: Before we salute America, America must treat blacks as equal. “We knew that what we were going to do was far greater than any athletic feat,” Carlos later said. John Dominis, a quick-fingered life photographer known for capturing unexpected moments, shot a close-up that revealed another layer: Smith in black socks, his running shoes off, in a gesture meant to symbolize black poverty. Published in life, Dominis’ image turned the somber protest into an iconic emblem of the turbulent 1960s.

"The Most Influential Images of All Time" - 11: David Jackson

Emmett Till - David Jackson

In August 1955, Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he stopped at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. There he encountered Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Whether Till really flirted with Bryant or whistled at her isn’t known. But what happened four days later is. Bryant’s husband Roy and his half brother, J.W. Milam, seized the 14-year-old from his great-uncle’s house. The pair then beat Till, shot him, and strung barbed wire and a 75-pound metal fan around his neck and dumped the lifeless body in the Tallahatchie River. A white jury quickly acquitted the men, with one juror saying it had taken so long only because they had to break to drink some pop. When Till’s mother Mamie came to identify her son, she told the funeral director, “Let the people see what I’ve seen.” She brought him home to Chicago and insisted on an open casket. Tens of thousands filed past Till’s remains, but it was the publication of the searing funeral image in Jet, with a stoic Mamie gazing at her murdered child’s ravaged body, that forced the world to reckon with the brutality of American racism. For almost a century, African Americans were lynched with regularity and impunity. Now, thanks to a mother’s determination to expose the barbarousness of the crime, the public could no longer pretend to ignore what they couldn’t see.

Fotografia - "Talibes, Modern day Slaves"

A reportagem Talibes, Escravos dos Tempos Modernos valeu ao fotojornalista português Mário Cruz o seu segundo grande prémio em dois meses. Depois de vencer na Categoria Assuntos Contemporâneos do World Press Photo, o trabalho que testemunha o tráfico e a exploração infantil de crianças e adolescentes que vivem em escolas corânicas do Senegal foi anunciado como o grande vencedor do Prémio Estação Imagem 2016.

"A fotografia da miúda vietnamita, nua, a fugir do napalm seria publicada hoje?" - Paulo Ferreira

As limitações externas ao direito de informar podem ser um caminho sem fim. Hoje é o nome dos terroristas, para tentar evitar mais atentados. Amanhã pode ser o próprio acto terrorista, cuja omissão informativa, se fosse possível, seria ainda mais eficaz nesse propósito de travar a repetição.

"GUNS AND HOTDOGS - How the U.S. Military Promotes Its Weapons Arsenal to the Public"

America’s wars take place far away — Kabul is 6,700 miles from New York or, traveling in the other direction, 7,400 miles from San Francisco. They also involve fewer and fewer Americans — the Army now has about 475,000 active duty soldiers, the lowest number since World War II.This leaves the Pentagon free to promote itself to a country that largely has no idea what war actually entails. In addition to standard TV advertising and flyovers at the Super Bowl, the U.S. military spends tens of millions of dollars each year on live events that function half as recruitment pitches and half as visceral plugs for its spectacular high-tech weaponry.Photojournalist Nina Berman has spent 10 years traveling to Fleet Weeks and air shows to document the peculiar collision between the Pentagon’s idealized self-image and the people who pay for it but have little comprehension of what they’re truly buying.

A Fotografia está de luto! - "Amnesty photographer Leila Alaoui killed in Burkina Faso al-Qaeda attack"

Working on assignment for Amnesty International, the celebrated photographer was fatally injured during an al-Qaeda attack on an international hotel in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, on Friday.

Comunicado da Amnistia Internacional

Estas são duas fotos de Leila bem ilustrativas do seu excelente trabalho. Vale a pena visitar o resto do trabalho. Aqui.

"Guerrilla Fighters of Kurdistan"

Every generation seems to grow up with the memory of at least one major war in his or her lifetime. Whether we choose to read the headlines or acknowledge the reality beyond our own everyday lives, the war that is currently underway in Iraq and Syria is one that affects us all. As a Kurdish soldier would tell me later— this conflict has been churning for centuries, but remains hidden from most of our views.

Like the rest of the world, I watched the Syrian Civil War escalate from simple protests to a full blown conflict between the Syrian regime, rebel militias, and jihadist organizations like the Islamic State and Jabat al Nusra. Ignoring the political demarcation of Syria’s borders, militant groups began to redraw their own territorial boundaries further into Iraq. Each heavy-handed stroke brought further destabilization to an already embroiled, war-torn region with deep-rooted sectarian tensions.

Seemingly without warning, Mosul— a densely populated city approximately 350 km north of Iraq’s capital of Baghdad— fell into the hands of the Islamic State, allowing the organization to capture ample amounts of American-made weapons. The militant group used this as an opportune moment to reinforce to their devout followers and Twitter-cheerleaders the rather absurd idea that some divine prophecy was at work— and an ancient Islamic Caliphate was being re-established. Leading up to this moment, the most effective fighting forces against the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS or ISIL as we see it being referred to in the press, were Shia militias with American blood on their hands, and the Peshmerga, a fighting force loyal to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which is the governing body of the Kurdish region in Northern Iraq.

In this massive game of chess, there was another distinct grassroots movement that caught my attention— Kurdish guerrilla groups known as the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), People’s Protection Units (YPG), and Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). These seemingly ragtag armies are in fact quite agile, effective and organized.

The Kurdish people number around 40 million— whose homeland is spread across vast swaths of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. They are considered to be the largest ethnic group that do not have their own country. This is important to note, because as you’ll find out, they have something, which they believe is worth fighting for— a long-awaited independence and region to call their own.

During my initial research, I couldn’t help but notice that there were many theories as to whom these Kurdish guerrilla groups were. The foreign press often romanticized the females in their ranks as fearless warrior women, while some of my Turkish friends suggested that they were terrorists, operating more as opportunists in a bloody war. I set out to uncover the truth, or at least to better understand the nuances behind the headlines. Portrait photography has a strange way of humanizing even the most distant of situations, and that was my goal with this project.

Por Joey L

Guerrilla Fighters of Kurdistan from Joey L on Vimeo.

As Fotos que já marcaram o século XXI (VIII)

A woman is peper-sprayed at Turkey's Gezi Park protest. [2013]

The world says goodbye to Nelson Mandela [2013]

Lesleigh Coyer, 25, of Saginaw, Michigan, lies down in front of the grave of her brother, Ryan, who served with the U.S. Army in both Iraq and Afghanistan [2013]

Kiev's Independence Square before and after the revolution [2014]

Afghan women turn out to vote in the first democratic transfer of power the country has ever seen. [2014]

Markiyan Matsekh plays piano for police during the Ukranian revoloution. [2014]