Strike captain during protest by the packing house workers from the Miller's series 'Chicago's South Side ' ( 1946 - 1948 ) :
https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/society/wayne-miller-chicagos-south-side/
World Press Photo of the Year ( 2004 ) :
An Iraqi man comforts his 4-year-old son at a holding center for prisoners of war, in the base camp of the US Army 101st Airborne Division near An Najaf.
The boy had become terrified when, according to orders, his father was hooded and handcuffed.
A US soldier later severed the plastic handcuffs so that the man could comfort his child. Hoods were placed over detainees' heads because they were quicker to apply than blindfolds. The military said the bags were used to disorient prisoners and protect their identities.
It is not known what happened to the man or the boy
From the Great Ongoing Series " The Pillar "
Joseph Duo, a Liberian militia commander loyal to the government, exults after firing a rocket-propelled grenade at rebel forces at a key strategic bridge during the brutal second Liberian Civil War
A fire broke out in Saltivka, a suburb of Kharkiv, after a Russian bomb struck a large gas pipeline in the area
From the Book " Will They Sing Like Raindrops or Leave Me Thirsty "
From the Book " The Italians "
From the Book " Indien Sehen "
Walker Evans was born in 1903 in St. Louis, Missouri, to an upper-middle-class family, affording him access to a formal education.
He initially aspired to become a writer, an interest he never fully abandoned. He attended Williams College in Massachusetts for a year and briefly studied at the Sorbonne in Paris before moving to New York City in 1926 to focus on photography.
From 1935 to 1937 Evans worked as a photographer for the “Resettlement” , a US government initiative instituted to document the severe conditions of rural America during the Great Depression in order to gain support for relief programs. A significant moment for his artistic growth, the position allowed Evans to refine his photographic eye as he traveled across the country, focusing his camera on churches, advertisements, sharecroppers, and steel mills. Despite the advantages of steady employment, Evans had some personal reservations about working for a government program. Before accepting the position, he declared that under no circumstances would he “ make photographic statements for the government…. No matter how powerful—this is pure record not propaganda…. No politics whatsoever. ”
Throughout his career, Evans continued to resist the characterization of his work as political, remarking, “ I didn’t like the label that I unconsciously earned of being a social protest artist. I never took it upon myself to change the world. ”
Even if Evans’s intentions were driven by aesthetic pursuits rather than a political agenda, viewers of his work are not afforded the same neutrality, especially with challenging photographs such as Minstrel Showbill or Houses and Billboards in Atlanta. Despite being taken nearly 90 years ago, these alarmingly casual depictions of violence in the American vernacular are not records of a distant past; instead, they are sobering reminders of struggles that persist in the US today. In addition to these challenging scenes, Evans on occasion injected humor and absurdity into his work, as seen in images such as Truck and Sign, in which the word “ Damaged ” appears boldly across the photograph. In the summer of 1936 Evans took a leave of absence from the Resettlement Administration to work with his friend, the writer James Agee, on the publication " Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. " Through words and photographs, the book provided an account of life among a group of tenant farmers in Hale County, Alabama.
Evans continued to photograph until his death in 1975, holding positions at Time as well as Fortune magazine, where he worked as an editor and photographer from 1945 to 1965. A 1938 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, Walker Evans: American Photographs, surveyed his first decade of photography, and was the first one-person presentation by MoMA’s Department of Photography. ( An exhibition of Evans’s photographs of Victorian houses four years earlier was considered an architecture exhibition ) The exhibition’s accompanying publication, which serves as an exploration of US society through its workers and institutions, is considered one of the most influential photobooks in the history of the medium because of its rhythmic, uninterrupted sequencing. While Evans’s enduring vision was embraced by museums worldwide, the lifelong contrarian pushed back against the acclaim, noting one should “ be careful about being established…. Part of me doesn’t want this to be established...because it tames it. ”
Today, Evans’s impact and “ lyric documentary ” style can be seen in the work of many contemporary artists, including William Christenberry and RaMell Ross, both of whom have also worked in Hale County. Their works probe everyday life to depict an “ epic moment in something incredibly simple. ”
Viewing their photographs, one can sense that behind the veneer of banality, potentially mistaken as commonplace, social commentary and radical thought might be revealed
U.S. Marines photograph the apocalyptic scenario of Kuwaiti oil fires
James Nachtwey is a renowned American photojournalist who has dedicated his life to capturing the horrors of war and social injustice through his powerful and haunting images. Born in Syracuse, New York in 1948, Nachtwey studied art history and political science at Dartmouth College before beginning his career as a photographer.
In the early 1980s, Nachtwey began covering conflicts in Central America, including the civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. He later documented the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, as well as the Gulf War and the conflict in Bosnia.
Nachtwey's work has been published in major news outlets such as Time, Newsweek, and National Geographic, and he has received numerous awards for his photography, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal and the World Press Photo of the Year.
In addition to his war photography, Nachtwey has also documented social issues such as poverty, famine, and the AIDS epidemic. He has worked with organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and has been a member of the photo agency Magnum since 1986.
Nachtwey's photographs are known for their raw and emotional impact, often capturing the human toll of war and conflict. Nachtwey's images focus on the impact of injustice and violence, yet they evoke a sense of compassion and sympathy. Within large-scale historical events of global impact, he documents intimate moments of humanity. His photographs can appear to have a formal completeness, but they are spontaneous, intuitive and often composed in a fraction of a second.
His images have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, and his book "Inferno" features a collection of the most powerful photographs from his career.
Despite the trauma and danger he has faced in his work, Nachtwey remains committed to using his photography to raise awareness and provoke change
" The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words "
~ Elliott Erwitt
A man tries to start his car after Israeli airstrikes at the Nuseirat Market in the Gaza Strip
Aftermath of an accident during the San Giusto religious celebration
The horse broke its leg while crowd remains focused on the ongoing event
As the fighting rages on, civilians escape from Irpin under Russian army mortar shelling
At least three civilians were killed during the evacuation
Raghu Rai was born in 1942 in the small village of Jhhang, now part of Pakistan. He took up photography in 1965, and the following year joined The Statesman newspaper as its chief photographer. Impressed by an exhibit of his work in Paris in 1972, Henri Cartier-Bresson nominated Rai to join Magnum Photos in 1977.
Rai left The Statesman in 1976 to work as picture editor for Sunday, a weekly news magazine published in Calcutta. He left in 1980 and worked as Picture Editor/Visualizer/Photographer for India Today, India’s leading news magazine, during its formative years. From 1982 to 1991, he worked on special issues and designs, contributing trailblazing picture essays on social, political and cultural themes, many of which became the talking point of the magazine.
In the last 18 years, Rai has specialized in extensive coverage of India. He has produced more than 18 books, including Raghu Rai’s Delhi, The Sikhs, Calcutta, Khajuraho, Taj Mahal, Tibet in Exile, India, and Mother Teresa.
For Greenpeace, he has completed an in-depth documentary project on the chemical disaster at Bhopal in 1984, and on its ongoing effects on the lives of gas victims. This work resulted in a book and three exhibitions that have been touring Europe, America, India and southeast Asia since 2004, the 20th anniversary of the disaster. Rai hopes that the exhibition can support the many survivors through creating greater awareness, both about the tragedy, and about the victims – many who are still uncompensated – who continue to live in the contaminated environment around Bhopal.
Rai was awarded the Padmashree in 1971, one of India’s highest civilian awards ever given to a photographer. In 1992, his National Geographic cover story Human Management of Wildlife in India won him widespread critical acclaim for the piece. Besides winning many national and international awards, Rai has exhibited his works in London, Paris, New York, Hamburg, Prague, Tokyo, Zurich and Sydney. His photo essays have appeared in many of the world’s leading magazines and newspapers including Time, Life, Geo, The New York Times, The Sunday Times, Newsweek, The Independent and The New Yorker.
He has served three times on the jury of the World Press Photo and twice on the jury of UNESCO’s International Photo Contest.
Rai passed away on 26 April 2026 in Delhi , at the age of 83.
With a profound compassion and humanity, Rai dedicated his life to photographing the world around him and the elusive passage of time. Using photography as an extension of the heart rather than the eye, his aim, as he wrote in his 2015 book Picturing Time, was to capture “ life’s longing for itself ”