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80th Anniversary of Hiroshima Nuclear Bombing 

On August 6 and 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped the only nuclear weapons ever used in war on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The combined death toll is estimated to be between 129,000 and 250,000, with roughly half of the victims perishing in the months immediately following the attacks.

This year's 80th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes amid heightened geopolitical tensions, underscoring the urgent need for remembrance.

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On August 6th and 9th​, 1945 the ​US dropp​e​d two atomic bombs on Japan: the only instances of nuclear weapons having been used in warfare​. The combined death toll was estimated to be between 129,000 to 250,000 with half of the victims perishing during the months following the attacks. ​​This year's 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes during a time of geopolitical tension, with people looking to the past as proof of the horrors of nuclear warfare.

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80th Anniversary of the Hiroshima... 

In response to the current humanitarian crisis' endeavours,​ and to mark the Global Summit: Health and Prosperity through Immunisation, Magnum Photos and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance​ collaborated on a project to showcase the impact Gavi-supported vaccines are having around the world. The resulting visual essays highlight the results achieved in the last 25 years, from the wholesome youth of today who have grown up free from disease to health workers braving conflict, from the excitement surrounding the rollout of malaria vaccines to the freedom celebrated by girls receiving a HPV vaccine. Magnum storytellers shine a light on the human stories​ the humanitarian system helps create every single day, all around the world, helping to build a healthier, safer and more prosperous future.

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Health and Prosperity through Immunisation... 

As demonstrations continue in Los Angeles following a series of coordinated city-wide federal immigration raids on June 6, Carolyn Drake took to the city’s streets photographing protesters at and around the Los Angeles City Hall in its Civic Center district. The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) led a series of raids across Los Angeles, resulting in thousands of arrests, receiving widespread criticism from local officials, advocacy groups and activists for what is seen as the indiscriminate targeting of immigrant communities. Large-scale demonstrations in Los Angeles and other cities in the USA followed, seeing violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement, including 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines deployed by the Trump administration to curb unrest — an act condemned as federal overreach by California state officials.

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L.A protests against I.C.E. 

Former Nicaraguan President Violeta Barrios Torres de Chamorro has died at the age of 95. Chamorro became an important figure in the opposition of Anastasio Somoza Debayle's government following the assassination of her husband, journalist Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal in 1978; an event which helped spark the Nicaraguan Revolution. Though a member of the junta which ruled the country following the Sandinistas' victory Over Somoza's regime, the establishment of a Marxist, pro-Soviet regime which began implementing censorship and police-state policies resulted in Chamorro's resignation. She resumed her role as editor of her deceased husband's newspaper, La Prensa, and became a vocal proponent of free speech and democracy. She was chosen as the opposition's candidate for President in the 1990 election and unexpectedly defeated incumbent Daniel Ortega. Violeta Chamorro was the first woman elected as a head of state in the Americas.

Archive 

Violeta Chamorro: 1929 - 2025 

Luciérnagas is in many ways a ritual. An attempt to exorcise the unresolved traumas in the spectral landscape of Magnum Photographer Yael Martinez’s homeland in Guerrero, México. The work began in 2013 after three members of the artist's family disappeared. This tragedy began an investigation into the pervasive violence of organized crime in the region, how it infiltrates daily life and transforms the spirit of a place. He later spent time alongside other families with missing loved ones. Through these encounters, dots were connected beyond the artist's immediate family and across borders into Honduras, Brazil, and the US, forming a constellation imbued with the shared experience of endemic violence. Throughout the work, images are threaded together by diaristic notes from the field. They were written by Martinez as he grappled with the range of emotions presented in the aftermath of loss and the process of navigating bereavement with families who were never given a chance to mourn. We don’t see death in Luciérnaga, but its omnipresence is felt throughout, lingering in the shadows of each photograph. Each image painfully underwritten by the result of a calculated violence that visited unseen and undetected, leaving behind the immense void of a vanished loved one. And yet there is always a sense of hope that informs the making of this work. Between 2019 to 2023, Martinez began a series of interventions into his photographs, piercing holes through the prints and then backlighting them. Bright rays emanate through the pictures in free flowing shapes, throwing light against a dark backdrop. In this process the light metamorphosizes with the scenes depicted and conjures an alchemy where something restorative, tentatively optimistic and resilient occurs. It is in Luciérnaga's blend of fantasy and reality that the well-covered topics of violence in the Latin American context are re-examined. Feelings are expressed rather than evoked, and via the ordinary characters who guide us through this book, scope is given to the humanity of those enduring a difficult territory, whilst confronting the personal cost of violence. Now brought together in book form for the first time, the disappearances at the hands of organized crime and state violence are given a new representation, one where light illuminates the darkness as the firefly leads us into new possible realms. Details Size: 18 x 24.5 x 2 cm

Book 

Luciérnagas 

Biography 

Herbert List 

Custodians of a Desire: Herbert List’s Couples at the Beach Herbert List’s archivist on the German artist’s photographs of love, desire, and friendship made in a restrictive political climate. Written by Peer-Olaf Richter During the 1930s, Herbert List spent time on the Italian, German and Greek beaches, and by the serene Swiss Lake Lucerne. Produced during a politically turbulent moment in European history, the work shows an escapist and idealist state of mind, where the power of youth and romance perseveres. But beneath the playful surface of List’s compositions lies deeper explorations of sexuality, framed within the context of a culture where, in many countries, homosexuality was illegal. As a gay artist, List did not only capture moments that were connected to a glance of erotic desire directly, but also developed a visual language to symbolize love and friendship in same-sex couples. As part of Magnum’s summer season, exploring beaches in Magnum photographers’ work, Herbert List’s archivist Peer-Olaf Richter has curated a collection of List’s beach images. Presented here along with a text by Richter, this underexplored body of work juxtaposes symbolic marriages of objects with some real life beach couples. Images aiming to symbolize friendship, love or intimacy between two people can be found throughout the work of Herbert List. ‘Le Couple’ is one of the earlier stills that List shot at the Baltic Sea in 1933. It shows two identical pins on a sandy beach. It was the same year and at the same beach that he photographed two boys wrestling in the sand; an image with a homoerotic undertone. As a gay artist, List did not only capture moments that were connected to a glance of erotic desire directly, but also developed a visual language to symbolize love and friendship in same-sex couples. The symbolic couple fascinates List, not just because it is a chiffre for something that List could not openly portray in the political climate of his times; it fascinates him, because it allows him to portray elusive subjects like love, intimacy, or friendship. In the careful arrangement and framing of objects, he charges these stills with meaning and emotions. His images of young men (and women) are playful, full of eros and lust for life. Capturing underlying emotions that do not appear through facial or physical expressions, though, is hard. Transferring this artistic dilemma to the world of objects allows him not only to find a chiffre for socially unaccepted emotions, but also to express something beneath the surface. Reducing his search for those symbols to the gay context, however, might be a little too limiting. A few years before ‘Le Couple’, List took a picture of two bicycles leaning against each other on the same beach. The careful viewer can see that it is a male and a female bike. Additionally, in the background, we can make out two men in a rowing boat. The political dimension of these images, though, is rather subtle: parked bicycles, put down glasses or vacant deck chairs all refer to the absent couple that left them behind. It might not be accidental that the gay theorist, critic and contemporary of List, Egon Vietta, pointed out a metaphysical aspect in List’s images through the presence of absence. This conspicuous invisibility of owners of glasses, bicycles and chairs might refer to the forced cultural invisibility of same-sex couples and homosexual life in the society of List’s time.

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Custodians of Desire 

"On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, marking the start of the Korean War. What followed was a savage conflict that claimed the lives of millions. The invasion followed the intensification of low-level fighting, which had been taking place along the two countries’ temporary border for years. Korea had been divided at the 38th parallel following the end of World War II; the Soviet Army took hold of the North, while US forces established control in the South with a view to eventually unifying the country. Both occupying powers established civilian regimes. However, ongoing resistance from the Soviet Union and North Korea’s new leaders towards attempts at forming one government ensured that Korea remained split. One year into the fighting, Werner Bischof journeyed to the region to investigate the human cost of the conflict, having just completed an assignment for Magnum in India." On the 75th anniversary of the start of the war, we look back at Bischof’s historic coverage. Bischof had been invited to join Magnum in 1948, following his extensive documentation of life across Europe in the aftermath of World War II. This was a transitional moment for the photographer who had received an art school training and originally intended to become a painter. Although he did not pursue this route, Bischof began his photographic career working in a studio, creating beautiful images dominated by natural forms and abstract shapes. However, the experience of documenting post-war Europe made him question his role as a photographer and he became committed to using the medium as a tool for social change. He officially joined the agency in 1949, alongside its four founding members. Moving away from his fine art roots, Bischof continued to embrace a more photojournalistic approach and, from 1951 to 1952, dedicated himself to documenting social and political issues across Asia. The photographer’s first stop was India, where he worked on a number of projects including his renowned photo-essay Famine Story, which shed light on the severe famine ravaging the country. Bischof soon became set on traveling to Korea, determined to expose the suffering of civilians caught up in the war. On the morning of July 5, 1951, he joined ten other correspondents from around the world on a flight to Seoul. “I just had to see for myself how this war was being conducted. (Something else was at play too: I found it important to show the human, the civilian side of the story. The Koreans who were chased out of their homes,)” he wrote in a letter to his wife, Rosellina Bischof, sent from Tokyo on July 11, 1951. Despite making the transition to photojournalism, Bischof’s relationship with photography remained complex. He particularly struggled with the realities of being a photojournalist and was angered by the prevalence of, what he regarded as, sensationalistic and careless reporting. In the same letter to Rosellina he described his first impressions of Seoul: “Among these ruins, the press center shone as the sole lit block, hundreds of journalists. It seemed to me as if we were vultures on the battlefield, always out for the sensationalistic …” However, it was a desire to go beyond the shocking images strewn across newspapers’ front pages that drove him on. So, as he had done in India, and post-war Europe before, Bischof looked beyond the immediate and produced a poignant documentation of those behind the battlefront. This deeper and more considered approach to reporting is a defining characteristic of Magnum photographers, but one that was shaped by Bischof’s artistic background too. “I always and in every way go too deep into the subject matter, and that is not journalistic,” he wrote in a letter to Robert Capa, sent from Tokyo on September 9, 1951. His artistic roots had also equipped him with an appreciation of beauty, which Bischof translated from his studio work into his documentary practice, including the work he produced in Korea. “His photographs had a tendency towards the absolute — a combination of beauty with truth: a stone became a world, a child was all children, a war was all wars,” observed the photojournalist Ernst Haas, an early Magnum colleague. After investigating war-torn Seoul, Bischof traveled to Sanyang-ri, a small village nestled in one of the many valleys of central Korea; an area that had become a no man’s land for troops in battle. “Not a single native Korean male is tolerated in this war zone, not a woman, not a child, only soldiers,” observed Bischof in the report for Magnum Photos, dated July 8, 1951, which he wrote to accompany his images. Bischof accompanied a small Civil Assistance group as they evacuated the inhabitants of this forgotten village. As was the photographer’s intention, the resulting photo story sheds light on the harsh realities for civilians caught up in the conflict. In his report, Bischof described the desperate scenes he encountered: starving and ill civilians, many of whom were reluctant to leave their homes. The Civil Assistance group moved from house to house, providing clothes, food and medical help. Bischof followed, photographing and making notes as the team evacuated the village and brought its inhabitants to a nearby rendezvous, where they received further assistance. “In front of another house, a small skeletal body sits in the dazzling sunlight, crouches naked on the floor, absolutely covered in flies. Near to her, her sixteen-year-old brother is unable to use his limbs. A shaven-headed figure in the hut takes no notice. We think it is a child, but the interpreter says it is a thirty-year-old woman,” reads an excerpt from the report. In January 1952 Bischof reluctantly traveled to Koje-Do Island in South Korea to document a United Nations re-education camp for Chinese and North Korean prisoners. On hearing the news that a number of prisoners had been shot, a colleague he was traveling with urged him to go. “I was against it, but John thought it very important — so we flew off, as if it were a Sunday excursion, journalists from around the world, joking cheerful,” he wrote. The camp was spread over a large area spanning two valleys and was home to around 160,000 North Korean and Chinese prisoners at its height. Journalists were able to explore relatively freely, but were prohibited from talking to inmates. Bischof characteristically focused on the prisoners, creating a series of images documenting their everyday lives and the United Nations attempts at reeducating them. His writing from the trip sheds light on his critical views of the situation: “We cannot deny that what we are doing here is political manipulation and an attempt to make these people grasp the ideas behind our own view of life.” The photo story was subsequently published in LIFE in March 1952. Bischof’s negative reception of the editors’ selection of images reflected his issues with photojournalism more broadly: “It is difficult to take photographs in a prison camp, to hold onto your humanity, and subsequently to have the best pictures discarded by the censors. I sometimes ask myself whether I have become just another “reporter,” a word that I have always hated so much.” Bischof was deeply affected by the suffering he witnessed in Korea. His images stand as a powerful testament to the massive civilian cost of the war, which remains unresolved to this day. Following his work in Korea, Bischof went on to spend five months in Japan, before traveling to Hong Kong, and then on to Indochina. He remained committed to photography until his untimely death in a road accident in the Andes on the May 16, 1954." - Written by Hannah Abel-Hirsch · Jul 27, 2018

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The Korean War: Behind the Battlefront... 

At the very beginning of his photographic career, Rafal Milach began to document the area of Polish Upper Silesia where he grew up. Stretching from southern Poland into areas of Czechia, the region is predominantly known for its heavy industry. More than twenty years later, he returned, this time on the Czech side of the border, to reflect on the search of identity of an area that has undergone radical political and economic transformation. This documentation is the first commission of the “A World in Color” series in collaboration with Fujifilm, in which a Magnum photographer responds to a selection of unseen color images found in the Magnum color library archive in Paris. Rafal Milach shoot a series of images in Ostrava, Czechia, in response to images taken by Magnum photographers documenting Czechoslovakia's liberation from the Soviet Union, the fall of communism, and the accompanying euphoria. "More than 35 years have passed since The Velvet Revolution, but the consequences are still felt in many places today," Milach said, reffering to Upper Silesia. While digging through the archives, Milach discovered a lack of documentation on the industrial character of the region, except from Eliott Erwitt's picture from Brno. This prompted the photographer to focus on post-industrial Czech Silesia, an area greatly affected by economic transformation.

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Post-industrial Czechia 

Migrant workers in Lebanon live in precarious conditions. Under the kafala system, also known as "sponsorship," each of them must have a Lebanese sponsor in order to be allowed to work in the country. Their fate hinges on the ethical compass of the latter, who usually controls their lives. Often, sponsors overwork and underpay migrant workers, isolating them from the outside world, and denying them access to healthcare. An estimated 176,500 migrants live in Lebanon as of 2025, about 70 per cent of whom are women. 50% are domestic workers, meaning they live with their employees, usually under harsh conditions. Stories of racism and discrimination are common among migrant workers in Lebanon, and their mistreatment and exploitation has become so normalised that even the most shocking stories no longer raise eyebrows. The recent Israeli war in Lebanon exacerbated their socio-economic situation, with many being abandoned by their employers and left on their own in the streets or locked in their houses in war-affected areas. Photographer Myriam Boulos was assigned by Médecins Sans Frontières to portray some of the female migrant workers living in shelters provided by the organisation, as well as the daily activities of MSF's workers at their clinic in the northern Beirut suburb of Burj Hammoud. There, MSF teams respond to migrants’ medical needs by offering basic consultations, sexual and reproductive health services, and mental health services including psychiatric consultations. During the intensive wartime period, migrant community leaders helped MSF teams reach migrants in the greatest need of assistance in overcrowded shelters and apartments. There, essential relief items were donated and medical care was delivered through a mobile clinic.

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Migrant Workers in Lebanon 

2025 commission photographed in Paris.

Portfolio 

Olivia Arthur Cover Story for CAP... 

In May 2025, Nanna Heitmann traveled with New York Times reporters to document the reaction of Syrians to the increase in sectarian tensions and violence in their country. Since the fall of Assad's dictatorship, violence against religious minorities is rising, coinciding with the country's reform process under a Sunni Muslim majority government. Starting with the massacre of Alawites — a religious minority to which Bashar al-Assad belonged — in March of this year, attacks on the Druze community followed. A religious minority belonging to a branch of Shi'ite Islam, the Druze primarily reside in Lebanon, Israel, and Syria's southern Sweida province, as well as in some suburbs of Damascus. Heitmann, Bureau Chief Vivian Yee and journalist Reham Mourshed traveled to the southern Damascus suburbs of Jamarana and Ashrafieh Sahnaya to attend the funeral of seven men killed in an attack suspected to have been carried out by Islamic extremists on April 29, after an audio clip that was attributed to a Druze cleric who was criticizing the Prophet Muhammad circulated on social networks. As internal clashes destabilize the country, the latest surge in violence against the Shiite minority has also prompted the Netanyahu government in Israel — which has close ties to the Israeli Druze community — to launch airstrikes against Syrian government targets in retaliation. The photographer documented the ensuing protests.

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Sectarian Violence in Syria 

In 2023, the Biden administration made the CBP One app mandatory for asylum seekers at the southern U.S. border, leaving many stranded in Mexican cities without access to basic services while waiting for appointments. In January 2025, the Trump administration disabled the app’s scheduling feature, effectively shutting down the only official asylum pathway and further limiting options for those already at risk. On assignment with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Yael Martinez documented migrant camps in Mexico City, where many people from Venezuela and Central America have settled in search of safety, stability, and a chance to rebuild their lives.

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Migrant Camps in Mexico City 

When he was 21, Lyon’s father passed on to him a 1953 Oldsmobile. He discovered the ecstasy of speeding along Georgia highways during the civil rights movement, with red dirt fields of peanuts and cotton flying by. In the excitement of driving, he realized his own mortality. Lyon’s ‘Junk: America in Ruins’ is a book of pictures of 86 American cars, mostly from the 1950s and 1960s, made in the junkyards of the western United States. The pictures were taken in Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma. This is a work of pure visual photography. The premise behind the work is that many things—sculptures, monuments, buildings—take on a new and added beauty as they deteriorate and become ruins: a certain pathos is added to their original beauty. This is true of the automobiles in this series: once the beloved machines of people and families who owned and drove them, they now evoke a terrible beauty and sadness. Damiani, Spring 2025 Hardbound 120 pages, 86 illustrations ISBN: 9788862088329

Book 

Junk: America in Ruins. 

Pope Francis, the first Latin American leader of the Catholic Church, known globally for his humility and deep compassion for the poor, has passed away at the age of 88, according to an announcement by Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Vatican camerlengo.

Archive 

Pope Francis: 1936 - 2025 

Sabiha Çimen has been photographically documenting the USA since 2019, capturing images of the country and its people through the lens of a Turkish immigrant. Sabiha Çimen’s “Blueberries in Turkey” is a visual love letter and a gentle provocation—an unfolding photographic meditation on displacement, perception, and the delicate friction of cultural encounter. Over six years, Çimen has journeyed through the vast and fractured landscapes of the United States, photographing not just places, but the echoes, textures, and temperatures of belonging and otherness. As a Turkish Muslim woman newly woven into the American fabric through marriage, Çimen does not simply document what she sees—she listens with her lens. Her medium-format color photographs are intimate and cinematic, saturated with curiosity and restraint. They move like quiet poems across interiors and highways, grocery aisles and kitchens, desert plains and suburban thresholds. Through her eyes, America is both strange and achingly familiar: full of contradictions, tenderness, excess, silence. The project is deeply personal. Çimen photographs her own process of becoming—learning the rituals of a new life, contending with a slow-burning culture shock that resides not in grand gestures, but in the mundane: the way onion and fruit is pre-sliced in supermarkets “to save time”, also a recurring theme in her encounters is the projection of exoticism and ignorance onto her Turkish identity. Innocent yet telling questions—“Do you have blueberries in Turkey?” “Donuts?” “Washing machines?”—reflect a deeper narrative of cultural misrecognition and geopolitical distance. These encounters are not simply humorous or absurd—they are profound. They reveal the quiet violence of assumption, and the distance between imagination and reality. But this is not just a story of how the immigrant sees America. It is also about how America sees the immigrant—how a woman wrapped in unfamiliar vowels and gestures is received, categorized, misunderstood, or celebrated. Çimen turns this gaze inside out, offering an inversion of the ethnographic eye. Her work collapses the traditional divide between documentarian and subject, replacing it with a fluid, reciprocal gaze—one that is deeply felt, politically aware, and rich with artistic intuition. From portraits to still lifes, from fleeting roadside moments to the layered intimacy of domestic space, “Blueberries in Turkey” composes a dreamlike atlas of Çimen’s American experience. It is both tender and sharp—a lyrical exploration of hybridity, alienation, and the surreal beauty of everyday life seen through the eyes of an outsider who is slowly becoming, yet never quite belonging. This ongoing body of work, tentatively titled “Blueberries in Turkey”, is envisioned as a photographic book. Far from a traditional travelogue, the project is an anthropological and phenomenological meditation on displacement, perception, and the aesthetics of difference. Çimen’s medium-format color photographs, marked by their quiet intensity and attention to detail, move fluidly between portraiture, landscape, interior, and still life—offering a polyphonic and richly textured account of contemporary America. Rather than seek definitive answers, Çimen’s project asks vital questions: What does it mean to belong? How does space transform identity? How does one navigate the beauty, absurdity, and violence of cultural translation? In documenting the subtle and the surreal, she creates a cartography of emotional and existential encounters—a visual essay on the meaning of home, hospitality, and the unseen labor of adaptation.

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“Blueberries in Turkey”. Viewing... 

The Volksbund organization's mission is to find the graves of every German who died in the country's wars, and to give each one a decent burial. The organization works to determine the identity of the people whose remains are found through objects: dog tags, letters from relatives, etc. Every year, they uncover war graves of 8000 to 12,000 former soldiers or victims. But in a Germany driven by the duty of remembering the atrocities committed by the Nazis during WWII, the group has been the subject of much controversy, stemming from its commitment to giving every body uncover a decent burial, making no distinction between victims and perpetrators. In 2020, anti-fascist leaders filed a complaint when they heard that some German politicians had attended a funeral ceremony with the organization, honoring the remains of prominent Nazis such as Julius Dettman, who had imprisoned Ann Frank, among others. Founded in 1919 as the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the private group used to receive donations from relatives of the dead, but with fewer living today, there is also some suspicion about where the funding comes from, especially at a time when the Afd is gaining strength. On assignment for the NYT Magazine, Antoine d'Agata traveled with journalist Nick Casey to follow the organization's activities. Starting from a house in the garden of the Van Beuningen family, which turned out to be a mass grave with more than 300 skeletons, the duo followed the search for the dead and delved into the cogs of the organization. They visited the headquarters, where they met Dirck Backen, the director of the Volksbund, and where they saw the methods used to uncover the identities of the bodies found. They also met Réveil, a 98-year-old man who decided to reveal a war crime he'd committed with his Maquis brigade at the end of the war: the killing of 47 Nazi soldiers. With his guerrilla group, they made the soldiers dig their own graves, then killed them all and left them there, and nobody knew about it until now. Casey and d'Agata also went to Hungary to witness the exhumation of the bones of many Hungarian and German soldiers who, according to Casey's report, died of typhus.

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Unearthing the Third Reich 

Martin Parr photographed tourists and the cherry blossom in Kyoto in April, before exhibiting his work Small World at Kyotographie, an international photography festival held over four weeks each year in Kyoto, Japan. "Everyone goes cherry blossom mad," Parr writes. "They just cannot get enough photographs of themselves, their kids, their pets and babies, getting as close as possible." Kyoto, known for its rich culture and well-preserved historic sites, is a top year-round tourist destination, with peak crowds during cherry blossom season (March–April) and autumn foliage (October–November). From 2013 to 2019, a weak yen led to a 300% rise in foreign tourism, mostly from Asia. Post-COVID, Japan saw record-breaking numbers—37 million visitors in 2024, up from 31 million in 2019. While this surge has boosted tourism revenue, it’s also sparked concerns over over-tourism. Crowding, environmental strain, and rising costs have made some locals feel excluded from their own attractions. In response, Japan is considering two-tiered pricing, charging foreigners more to help keep access affordable for residents.

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Cherry Blossom Crowds in Kyoto 

Forty-six hours before Rüdiger Koch officially seized the Guinness World Record for the longest time spent living in an underwater fixed habitat, New York Times Magazine reporter Mark Yarm took a 15-minute motorboat ride from Linton Bay Marina, in north-central Panama, to visit him. It was a warm afternoon in January, and Koch was approaching a full 120 days spent working, eating, sleeping, drinking and smoking cigars in a room 36 feet below the surface of the Caribbean. His 304-square-foot habitat was inside the underwater buoyancy chamber that helps stabilize a floating home called SeaPod Alpha Deep. An armed security guard was in the above-water part of the structure, monitoring Koch and ensuring that the pod did not have “any visitors that we don’t want.” When Yarm's boat arrived, Koch threw down a cable and winched Yarm up. Koch arrived here, in small part, via a San Francisco-based nonprofit called the Seasteading Institute, which promotes “living on environmentally restorative floating islands with some degree of political autonomy.” The vision, as the Institute’s president, the “seavangelist” Joe Quirk, once told Guernica, is “startup societies where people could form whatever kind of community they wanted” — a libertarian-inflected world where, it is said, you could “vote with your boat,” relocating to a community in line with your views. The concept captured people’s imaginations long before it had a name. In 1895, Jules Verne published “Propeller Island,” a novel about a moving man-made island inhabited by millionaires. By the 1960s, real attempts were being made: Ernest Hemingway’s brother, Leicester, founded the Republic of New Atlantis, a bamboo raft anchored about six miles off the coast of Jamaica. (It washed away.) Still extant is the Principality of Sealand, founded in 1967 on a disused antiaircraft platform seven miles off the shore of Britain. The inventor R. Buckminster Fuller helped design a floating metropolis called Tetrahedron City; the project’s financier died, and plans to build it were abandoned. Koch spent his career in aerospace engineering; he is also a “long-term” believer and investor in Bitcoin. Now his time is occupied by Ocean Builders, the company that has set up three solar-powered SeaPods, of differing designs, near Linton Bay Marina. It is a partnership between Koch and two other independently wealthy men: Chad Elwartowski, an American Bitcoin enthusiast; and Grant Romundt, a Canadian tech entrepreneur on an “anti-aging health-span journey.” Alec Soth photographed Koch and his business partners for The New York Times Magazine.

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The Techno-Utopians Who Want to... 

Since 2023, Thomas Dworzak has been traveling along the Russian border, from Finland to eastern Kazakhstan, to assess the impact of the war in Ukraine on neighboring countries: their perceptions of and relations with Russia, the influence of the United States, and the evolution of their own national security policies after the invasion. Since Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946, the term has come to define the separation between Russia and the West, a way to examine the shifting ideological and geopolitical boundary between Russia and its influence on Eastern Europe, and these longstanding tensions with the West. Covering military training, landscapes, museums, and ordinary moments of life, Dworzak explores each place with a specific geographical angle, linking each to its historical significance. Each of these countries has its specific complex history with Russia, and the war in Ukraine has moved people with a particular sentiment, whether it be independence or aggressivity towards Russia, like in the Baltics where volunteer military training is expanding, or a more tempered sentiment and assimilation of Russian culture such as in Kazakhstan.The photographer explores the tensions linked to a painful past, stretching back to Imperial Russia, and awakened again by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

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The New Iron Curtain - Ongoing... 

Countries worldwide are feeling the impact of the Trump administration's cuts to foreign aid, which eliminated over 90% of contracts and reduced funding by around $60 billion. Many programs in vulnerable nations rely on USAID for health systems and nutrition, while efforts to combat terrorism and trafficking, including fentanyl, will also be affected, according to U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric. Magnum Photographers have traveled to many of the countries benefiting from or relying on foreign aid, many now shuttered and leaving millions of people without access to life-saving care.

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USAID: The Human Cost of Trump's... 

On Saturday, October 7th, Israel was taken by surprise in an unexpected and severe cross-border assault by Hamas from Gaza, resulting in the initial deaths of 900 people. The BBC reported that included in this number were 260 individuals attending a music festival. With many still missing or abducted by Hamas in Israel, families are left desperately seeking information as the conflict unfolds. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared war on Hamas, vowing to use “enormous force” by launching strikes in Gaza and imposing a “complete siege” on the Gaza Strip, freezing the flow of essential supplies. According to the BBC, as of October 9th approximately 690 people in Gaza had lost their lives and more than 120,000 had been displaced from their homes. The result of this has triggered the latest outbreak of fighting in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, drawing in outside powers and echoing across the broader Arab region.

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Israel and Palestine from the Archives... 

The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014, triggered by Ukraine's Maidan Revolution. Over the following eight years, the conflict escalated with naval skirmishes, cyberattacks, Russia's annexation of Crimea and support to pro-Russian separatists fighting against Ukraine’s military in the ongoing Donbas War. In February 2022, Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, deepening its occupation and igniting the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II. The war has caused a massive refugee crisis and led to the loss of tens of thousands of lives. Magnum Photographers have been documenting the Russo-Ukrainian War since 2014, capturing scenes from the front lines and inside both countries, illustrating the impact of the war on people's daily lives. The selection below showcases our ongoing coverage in the region, which has spanned over a decade.

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Russo-Ukrainian War 

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