2024 Year in Photos

A person wearing a dark outfit and a backpack walks through a forest enveloped in orange smoke.

Chiang Mai, THAILAND

Haze heavily shrouds a forest fire control officer using a leaf blower at Thailand’s Mae Ping National Park, Chiang Mai, one of the country’s top 10 severely burned protected areas.

Sayan Chuenudomsavad | Bangkok Tribune

A man bathes in a river next to logs, with just his face above the water, under a partly cloudy sky.

Atalaya, PERU

A sawmill worker cools off in a river next to logs in the Peruvian Amazon. After traveling by river, roundwood arrives at sawmills for its first transformation into boards or slats. The team at OjoPúblico identified that 55% of the timber traded by forest concessionaires in the Peruvian Amazon have a high or very high risk of being illegal.

Marco Garro | OjoPúblico

A densely packed harbor with numerous small fishing boats closely arranged on the water. Buildings and infrastructure are visible in the background.

Nouadhibou, Mauritania

The artisanal fishing port of Nouadhibou is home to 5,000 to 7,500 pirogues used to fish for octopus. Up to 50,000 men work as fishers, and the octopus trade employs at least 100,000 people overall. Overfishing has become a growing concern in the region.

Nathalie Bertrams | El País

"Climbing a rusty ladder on the tallest building in Nouadhibou’s harbor to gain a better view, we realized the immense scale of Mauritania’s artisanal octopus fishery, with up to 7,000 pirogues. From this vantage point, the stark inequities of the trade became clear: fishers endure grueling conditions, spending up to two weeks at sea yet remaining in poverty, while European traders reap the majority of the profits."

Nathalie Bertrams

four small children sit on a boat, with a river and the rainforest blurred in the background.

SHARAMENTSA, Ecuador

Children from the Mukucham family in Wichimi in the Ecuadorian Amazon ride a solar-powered boat. Wichimi, an Achuar community, staunchly defends its ancestral land, opposing any oil exploration within its territory. The community's unwavering commitment to protection extends to seeking alternatives for powering boats and generating electricity.

Misha Vallejo Prut | The Washington Post

A person underwater wearing a snorkeling mask and a white shirt holds a cluster of small coral. Sunlight filters through the water, creating patterns on the person’s skin.

Sucre, Venezuela

Biologist Jesús Subero shows a sample of the Unomia stolonifera coral in Mochima National Park, the site of the largest invasion of this coral. In 2014, Unomia unexpectedly appeared off the coast of Venezuela. With no natural predators there, it quickly overran local ecosystems, taking over 80 percent of shallow reefs and hard substrates. This invasion has displaced other corals and seagrasses that are important for marine biodiversity.

Ana María Arévalo Gosen | Leica Fotografie International

an aerial view of a muddy field of orange water and researchers collecting samples.

Kotzebue, UNITED STATES

In the remote Western Brooks Range in Alaska, the visible impact of climate change is striking. Permafrost, the layer of soil that remains frozen throughout the year, is thawing at an unprecedented rate and exposing the pyrite-rich bedrock to water and oxygen. Rivers and their tributaries are now flowing bright orange with oxidized iron and sulphuric acid as a result.

Taylor Roades | Scientific American

an aerial view of a small boat holding a few people and a deceased freshwater dolphin travels across yellow-tinted water.

Tefé, Brazil

A victim of heat and drought, a freshwater dolphin is ferried to a makeshift necropsy suite near the city of Tefé, Brazil. Extreme flooding and droughts may be the new norm for the Amazon, challenging its people and ecosystems.

Dado Galdieri | Science Magazine

a shirtless man and a white horse stand in a reservoir with hills in the distance.

Adıyaman, Turkey

A man bathes his horse in the Atatürk Dam reservoir on the Euphrates River. A series of dams and years of conflict have transformed the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which gave rise to some of the world’s earliest civilizations.

Murat Yazar | Yale Environment 360

a woman sits for a portrait in her home, dressed in red-and-white Afro Brazilian clothing, with figurines and red curtains in the background.

Porto Alegre, BRAZIL

Mother Ieda de Ogum, 83, founded the Ilê Nação Oyó Umbanda Center, a “terreiro,” or religious space, in the Cidade Baixa neighborhood in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1964. At this location, floodwaters from the May 2024 flood in Rio Grande do Sul state reached over 1.5 meters in height. “It was horrible. Practically all of my images were damaged. Everything that was material was gone. I found my cowrie shells at the gate. The saints were floating in the water,” Ieda de Ogum said.

Desirée Ferreira | Nonada Jornalismo

"Documentar a história da Mãe Ieda de Ogum e o impacto da enchente neste terreiro foi marcante. Quase três meses após a enchente, as pessoas ainda sofriam para reconstruir o perdido e lidar com o desaparecimento de memórias feito pela água. Fotografar e poder compartilhar isso foi essencial para que essa história alcançasse mais pessoas e não caísse no esquecimento."

"Documenting the story of Mother Ieda de Ogum and the impact of the flood on this sacred ground was a powerful experience. Nearly three months after the flood, people were still struggling to rebuild what was lost and dealing with the vanishing of memories caused by the water. Photographing and sharing this was essential to ensure that this story reached more people and didn't fall into oblivion."

Desirée Ferreira

a woman stands in front of a pile of burning trash, with the fire reflected in puddles on the ground.

Lautoka, Fiji

Asinate Lewabeka, who makes an income washing and sorting cans, plastic bottles, and other materials for recycling, burns trash near her home in Lautoka, Fiji on May 9, 2024. Less than a third of Fiji’s plastic waste is locally produced. The rest drifts in with ocean currents from as far away as South Africa and Mexico. It must be disposed of, wherever it comes from, and burning is often the simplest option.

Adam Ferguson | TIME

A worker in a green shirt and yellow hard hat adjusts stacks of neatly arranged wooden planks inside a large industrial warehouse. The planks are stacked high, filling the space.

Madre de Dios, Peru

A Maderacre worker piles wood products in Madre de Dios, Peru. Maderacre argues that it’s carrying out selective, sustainable logging on its 1,000-square-mile timber concession that maintains the forest’s ecological balance. But the approach of selling carbon credits, known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, or REDD+, raises questions about the booming carbon credit market and about how to protect the world’s forests, which sequester billions of tons of carbon.

Angela Ponce | The Washington Post

A man stands in front of a mangrove forest partially submerged in water. Dense trees with prominent roots surround him. He wears a short-sleeved, gray polo shirt.

Ranong, Thailand

Watchara Kumpai used to work in the logging and tin mining industries, but now helps his community protect its mangroves in the south of Thailand. The country aims to bring thousands of hectares of mature mangroves into its new carbon market, but local communities are concerned about the consequences.

Luke Duggleby | Dialogue Earth

Two people are shown in a shallow brown creek in the rainforest, one floating on his back. Lush green foliage surrounds the scene, casting shadows on the river.

Auaris, BRAZIL

After dragging 14 gallons full of fuel to be destroyed, agents for the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) cool off in a creek. A special task force temporarily saved the creek from illegal gold mining. Meanwhile, a humanitarian crisis unfolded among the Yanomami, the largest Indigenous group in Brazil, caused by mining operations in their land.

Lalo de Almeida | Folha de S. Paulo

A view from below of five divers working on a coral nursery in the ocean, silhouetted against the sunlight filtering through the water.

Kralendijk, Bonaire

Divers install shade structures on coral trees in Reef Renewal Bonaire's deepwater boulder coral nursery at Oil Slick Leap. They’re trying to understand how shading corals and relocating them to deeper, cooler water might reduce the impacts of sun exposure and high temperatures on corals, helping to mitigate coral bleaching. According to Reef Renewal, Bonaire’s coral reefs last year endured “one of the most severe bleaching events in recent memory.”

Jennifer Adler | Vox

A man and his young son stand knee-deep in water, the boy holding a spear for spear fishing.

Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

Sthembiso Biyela brings his son with him when he tends to his fish kraal in Kosi Bay, an estuarine system in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Province. The practice of using fish kraals at Kosi Bay goes back hundreds of years. For Biyela, it is as much a source of livelihood as it is a practice of a centuries-old tradition. “These are the only things that show that there were people here before,” he says.

Barry Christianson | The Continent

An elderly man with gray hair is wearing a nasal cannula for oxygen support. He sits on a bed, partially unbuttoning his beige shirt in a dimly lit room, looking to the side.

Karauli, INDIA

Badri Prasad is a 70-year-old silicosis victim from Mamchari village, in Karauli, Rajasthan. Silicosis is likely the most underreported occupational disease in India. Often called the “grinder’s asthma” or “miner’s phthisis,” the disease is caused by continuous inhalation of active silica dust particles. It is most common among workers in industries that involve direct exposure to silica dust.

Sibtain Hyder | The Caravan

Two scientists use syringes and test tubes for research in a lab.

Osun, Nigeria

Joyce Oluokun (left) and Florence Akinyi are working on master’s degrees at the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases. The institute has trained more than 1,600 African scientists in genomics.

Andrew Esiebo | Science Magazine

Two doctors perform surgery on a patient in a dimly lit operating room illuminated by overhead lights. Both surgeons are wearing blue scrubs and protective masks.

Amarah, IRAQ

Doctors work in an operating room at Al Sadr Hospital in Amarah in August 2024. Overwhelmed by patient numbers augmented by the climate-displaced, doctors and staff struggle to cope.

Susan Schulman | Daily Maverick

A woman wearing a headscarf looks at herself in a mirror. She is sitting on a bed with patterned bedding, adjusting her earrings. The room has bunk beds and various personal belongings.

MUMBAI, INDIA

Cancer patient Tulasi Singh, 38, prepares to be photographed at the Gadge Maharaj Dharamshala, a hostel for cancer patients in Mumbai. Singh, who is from a small town in West Bengal, completed her chemotherapy and radiation.

Afzal Adeeb Khan | Behan Box

"Witnessing the pain of cancer patients deeply moved me and left me numb at first. Despite being in her most vulnerable state, Tulasi was incredibly generous and kind, allowing me to photograph her. It takes extraordinary courage for a woman battling cancer to open up and let someone capture such intimate moments. Reflecting on it now, I’m still overwhelmed by the experience.

What amazed me most about Tulasi was her resilience—she faced her treatment almost entirely alone, yet still found the strength and compassion to support others. Her love for being photographed quickly broke down barriers, and with the help of my camera, we became friends in no time."

Afzal Adeeb Khan

a mother looks down at her two teenage children in bed. One is looking at a thermometer and has crackers and pills in her lap.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

With their mother, Verónica, Milo, 13, and Lara, 15, suffer from dengue fever in Buenos Aires. Dengue fever has evolved into a global epidemic due to climate change, urbanization, and globalization.

Irina Werning | La Nacion

An open journal with handwritten notes, stickers, and colorful sticky notes is placed on a table. Behind it, folders labeled "Environmental Tasks," "Abbz," "Piper," and "Medical Records" are visible.

Paden City, UNITED STATES

Abby Tennant’s journal documents June 6, 2022, the Monday before they fled their home in the night. Tennant spent years chronicling her family’s experiences and illnesses while living next to EQT’s fracking operations in Knob Fork, West Virginia.

Quinn Glabicki | PublicSource

An elderly couple sits closely on a couch, embracing each other, with closed eyes and relaxed expressions.

Paden City, UNITED STATES

Abby and Scott Tennant embrace in their Paden City, West Virginia, home on February 16, 2024. They and their daughter, Piper, were forced to leave their home near EQT’s fracking operations in Knob Fork, West Virginia, after the family documented years of illnesses consistent with exposure to volatile organic compounds emitted by the company’s operations.

Quinn Glabicki | PublicSource

A woman seated outside a wooden building receives a vaccination from a health care worker wearing a mask and gloves. Another person is seen holding papers in the foreground.

Mwenga, Democratic Republic of the Congo

A woman in Kamituga, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, receives an mpox vaccine after coming into contact with a confirmed case. Over the past year, mpox has taken off in the remote gold mining town, spreading mainly among miners and sex workers, before making its way to Goma, a major city, as well as other parts of the region and neighboring countries.

Arlette Bashizi | Science Magazine

A person wearing protective gear, including a mask and gloves, stands in a room with mud walls and a tin roof. Laundry hangs on a line, and various tools lean against the wall. The person holds a small object.

Kenema, Sierra Leone

Ibrahim Abu Zacharia collects a live rodent trap from a home in Ngeihun, Sierra Leone. About two in every five mice his team catches are infected with the Lassa virus, he says. The rodents that carry the Lassa virus are denizens of poor villages in West Africa, where they scurry in and out of houses in search of food. Researchers at the Kenema Government Hospital in Sierra Leone trap them, both for research and to remove them from the villages.

Apochi Owoicho | Science Magazine

A person wearing glasses is seen through a reflective window, standing in an outdoor setting with buildings and trees in the background.

Willow City, UNITED STATES

Cindie Haakenson is seen through a window of her home as the family farm is reflected before her on May 21, 2024, in Willow City, North Dakota. Despite a preference to remain at home, Haakenson's husband, Sherwood, needed to move to a 24-hour long-term care center. He had been suffering from multiple fainting episodes in recent months due to issues with his heart and kidney. The couple confronted a situation many aging farmers fear: being forced to sell or break up the farm to pay for long-term care.

Tim Evans | NPR

A group of paramedic pose in front of an ambulance

Willow City, UNITED STATES

EMTs Wade Kottre (from left), Lori Kottre, Dwight Kuntz, and Rita Wallin are shown on a county road in Glen Ullin, North Dakota. The ambulance service is staffed entirely by volunteers and provides an essential service for Glen Ullin and the surrounding area.

Tim Evans | NPR

"I’m grateful to have met Sherwood and Cindie Haakenson shortly before Sherwood passed. Their health journey speaks to the financial uncertainties and anxieties faced by many older Americans in rural communities, where medical access is steadily eroding and bills aren’t always covered by insurance. To me, the Haakensons' story underscores a profoundly tragic aspect of US healthcare: exorbitant costs can leave people feeling a sense of relief when a loved one dies."

Tim Evans

DALLAS, UNITED STATES

Mr. and Mrs. Gipson own the Gipson grocery store in West Dallas, one of the longest-running Black-owned groceries in the nation. It opened its doors in 1956. West Dallas has a deep environmental history that began during the Industrial Revolution. Redlining resulted in the concentration of poverty in Black and brown communities, contributing to the exploitation of land for industrial use. West Dallas residents suspect that prolonged exposure to pollution from a manufacturing plant may have contributed to health problems.

Nitashia Johnson | Photographers Without Borders

A person standing in front of a mirror applies makeup while holding a baby on their shoulder.

Mayflower, UNITED STATES

Rudy Gibson applies makeup while holding her newborn son, Kulture. Gibson’s early postpartum period was not a time of rest and recovery. Instead, she spent the time fighting for health insurance while caring for her children.

Florence Middleton | Pulitzer Center

A group of people sit in a circle on cushions in dim lighting, surrounded by lit candles. They appear to be engaged in a meditative or spiritual activity.

Iquitos, Peru

Luis Pérez Cerrano (left), son and apprentice of the master Justina, offers a drink remedy to a Thai woman during an ayahuasca ceremony for international visitors near Iquitos, Peru. Traditional healing in the community provides vital care where modern medical facilities are scarce.

Carlos Suárez Álvarez | El Diario AR

A person in yellow rain gear and a helmet works on a fishing boat, holding a large chain. Seagulls fly nearby against a cloudy sky. Fishing nets and buoys are visible on the boat deck.

Celtic Sea, IRELAND

Ship engineer Larry Bantaculo handles a net aboard the fishing vessel Aquila on the ship’s final voyage. The Aquila is being scrapped as part of Ireland’s controversial government decommissioning scheme to reduce by about 30% the number of Irish fishing boats operating in local waters. Already hammered by overfishing, the increased price of fuel and energy, inflation, geopolitics, and climate change, the Irish fishing industry is now at risk of collapse due to changes in trade rules triggered by Brexit.

Finbarr O’Reilly | The Skipper

Two people in long coats walk along a grassy cliff overlooking a large body of water. Snow-capped mountains and a cloudy sky are visible in the background.

Pond Inlet, CANADA

Trisha Killiktee and Angeline Kiyoapik are performers with a theater group that welcomes tourists to Pond Inlet, an Inuit village on the edge of the Northwest Passage, about as far north as you can get in Canada. Sometimes, their school classes are interrupted by the arrival of a cruise ship.

Berta Vicente Salas | France 24

An elderly woman stands outdoors in a mountainous landscape, holding a rope. She wears a hat and traditional clothing. A small dog sits nearby, and there are stone walls and vegetation surrounding them. Snow-capped peaks rise in the background.

Cordillera Blanca, PERU

Dionisia Moreno washes her food with water from mountain canals. Glacial retreat has exposed rocks that turned the waters vital to Indigenous communities acidic and toxic. Moreno says she longs for the abundance of her youth, when trout could be plucked from the river, thick snow and ice covered the peaks, springs gushed from the mountainside, and grasses for grazing livestock grew waist-high.

Marco Garro | The New York Times

Two workers in safety gear stand on a ladder in a dimly lit industrial facility, inspecting equipment. The background shows large pipes and machinery.

Middelburg, South Africa

Senior technicians Shoki Mbowane (left) and Mazz Scott are shown inside Komati power station. The two women are learning to install solar panels. The oldest coal-fired power station in South Africa, Komati was the first to be decommissioned and is being used as a pilot for energy transition in South Africa.

Paul Botes | The Outlier

"The challenges this small team is facing are enormous, and they receive unfair criticism for decisions made on a national level. They do great work with a limited budget, which Eskom can learn from and implement on a larger scale. All of them are seasoned coal power station workers—losing that suddenly and being required to pivot 180 degrees could not have been easy."

Paul Botes

A person stands in a field, facing a large wildfire with intense smoke and flames in the distance. The sky is filled with a smoky haze.

MCCLURE, UNITED STATES

Blake Gerard looks out over the horizon at the setting sun behind a cloud of smoke from a harvested field he control-burned in McClure, Illinois. The Gerard family tends to 2,000 acres of rice. Four generations of the family have farmed in the changing landscape of Illinois agriculture.

Lylee Gibbs | The Daily Egyptian

A girl with braided hair sits by a riverbank. Two green parrots perch on her shoulder. The background features lush greenery and the river.

Nueva Oceania, Peru

Nayeli Inuma Añez, Nueva Oceania chief Luz Mery Añez Silva’s daughter, watches the river rise. The logging company Canales Tahuamanu has sued the village, accusing members of being land invaders. In 2022, they lost their recognition as an Indigenous community.

Florence Goupil | The Washington Post

A person stands in front of dense foliage wearing a mask with long hair-like strands and a mustache.

Carey Island, malaysia

Indigenous Mah Meri woodcarver Samri Abdul Rahman is keeping tradition alive with his wood carving. Carey Island, just an hour’s drive from Malaysia’s biggest city, Kuala Lumpur, is covered almost entirely with oil palm trees. The multinational conglomerate Sime Darby owns 89 percent of the land, but a community of Indigenous Mah Meri people holds onto a small portion of the island.

James Whitlow Delano | Inside Climate News

"The story offered the chance to offer a uniquely nuanced examination on palm oil production. Over the decades, I had mostly encountered massive oil palm plantations, where corporations often expropriate Indigenous lands, clear-cutting the rainforest, because the Indigenous inhabitants mostly lack official title to their land.

This story was different. I was able to document the lives of empowered smallholder farmers whose lives have been lifted up by this cash crop—a completely different cause and effect due to oil palm than I’d encountered before."

James Whitlow Delano

An elderly woman with gray hair sits at a table with a hand on her shoulder, wearing a brown shawl.

Delhi, India

Tara Manchin Hangzo stands next to her mother Madhumati Khwairakpam, 87, during lunch in the apartment they share with family members in Delhi, India, on March 31, 2024, after being displaced from their home in Manipur. Ethnic violence erupted on May 3, 2023, in India’s northeastern state of Manipur between the Meitei people, a non-tribal majority living in the Imphal Valley, and the Kuki tribal community from the surrounding hills. Hangzo identifies as Kuki, and her mother identifies as Meitei.

Beth LaBerge | KQED

a close-up of two hands holding an old photo of a man in a suit and a woman in a blue dress.

Delhi, India

Tara Manchin Hangzo holds a photo of her parents Vungkham Hangzo (left) and Madhumati Khwairakpam in the apartment Hangzo shares with her mother, Madhumati, and her sister and sister-in-law in Delhi, India, on March 31, 2024. The photo was recovered by Hangzo’s sister-in-law, Renu Takhellambam, at their home in Manipur after the house was looted following the violence that erupted on May 3, 2023.

Beth LaBerge | KQED

A person in a black hooded jacket sits on a roadside, holding a child wrapped in a gold emergency blanket. An orange life vest and a pair of shoes lie nearby on the wet pavement.

Arras, FRANCE

A woman and a child, both Kurdish migrants, rest after a failed attempt to reach the United Kingdom by boat, as they were discovered by the police in Ambleteuse, in northern France.

Bernat Armangue | Associated Press

A woman with long curly hair kisses a young girl with similar hair on the forehead. They are standing in a kitchen with shelves holding cups and containers in the background. The girl is smiling.

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

Zoheny Lugo and her daughter in their kitchen in Palmitas, a low-income neighborhood of Bogotá, the Colombian capital. Lugo and her family are rebuilding the middle-class life they had to leave behind in Venezuela. Lugo left a career job at a freight company during Venezuela’s economic meltdown to move to Colombia. She and her husband initially lacked permission to work so they took off-the-books jobs. Eventually, Lugo got a permit for Venezuelan migrants and now works helping other migrants.

Anthony Vazquez | WBEZ

A group of people stand in front of a building holding colorful signs that read, WE ARE NO LONGER A FOOD DESERT. A red carpet and balloons decorate the entrance, while two hands hold up phones to capture the moment.

Cairo, UNITED STATES

Board members of Rise Community Market, a co-op-style grocery store, celebrate the grand opening of the grocery store June 16, 2023 in Cairo, Illinois. Cairo had been a "food desert" for seven years before Rise opened. The grocery store has struggled since opening, relying on grant funding to stay afloat, something experts say will continue to happen unless the 1930s Robinson-Patman Act, an antitrust law designed to keep small retailers in business, is enforced.

Julia Rendleman | Capitol News Illinois

"We spent a year reporting this story—from its hopeful grand opening to board meetings to the slow days when very few customers came in the store and produce grew old on the shelves. It became clear that the store was struggling, despite all the efforts of the very committed board and community members.

Over the course of reporting, we also witnessed the benefit of a community store beyond providing fresh groceries. The store often hosted events in the parking lot and allowed a local food bank to set up distribution there as well. It is unclear what will happen to Rise and rural communities like Cairo, Illinois without the enforcement of laws designed to protect them."

Julia Rendleman

A man stands surrounded by shelves filled with rolls of various fabrics. He appears to be taking inventory or inspecting the materials, with the colorful rolls prominently displayed in the foreground.

Green Bay, UNITED STATES

Micheal Weber retrieves rolls of fabric at Krueger International Inc. in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The company specializes in furniture for educational institutions and offices. Unlike some manufacturers with sprawling supply chains for materials and services, Krueger does most of its furniture making in-house in its Wisconsin plants, from bending and cutting metal to upholstering, finish work, and final assembly.

Mark Hoffman | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A person in a thick coat with fur stands on a large seal skin being held up by a group of people. The background shows a few houses and a partly cloudy sky.

Utqiagvik, UNITED STATES

A crowd gathers around a seal skin stretched between posts for a “blanket toss” at Nalukataq, the annual whaling festival. In Utqiagvik, Alaska, the Iñupiat rely on whaling and subsistence hunting for the bulk of their diet, a practice dating back thousands of years.

Gabe Allen | Mongabay

A large cross stands on a hilltop at sunset, surrounded by people looking at the view. A cable car travels in the background. The sky is a warm gradient of orange and yellow.

Salta, ARGENTINA

A view of Salta, the capital of the province also named Salta, from a hill. Argentina has been known as one of Latin America’s most socially progressive countries. But President Javier Milei’s austerity measures have cut programs aimed at helping women.

Anita Pouchard Serra | The New York Times

A young boy stands against a dark background, holding a patterned object made of natural material. Soft light highlights his face and the object.

Parintins, BRAZIL

Near the right bank of the Amazon River, a resident of the Santa Rita de Cássia do Lago da Valéria community, also in Parintins, displays an archaeological ceramic fragment. The Amazon is an anthropogenic forest. The biome's mega biodiversity is directly connected to the nature management of Indigenous peoples in the past. The past and the present are integrated because these people continue to be responsible for the construction of Amazonian landscapes.

Mauricio de Paiva | InfoAmazonia

Four people in winter gear hike through a snow-covered landscape at night. They carry backpacks and use headlamps, which create trails of light.

Kirkenes, Norway

“The whole Russian plan is that, if things really heat up with NATO, they need to create a buffer” to preserve the capability to carry out nuclear strikes, a regional counterintelligence chief said. That buffer starts in Kirkenes, Norway. For years, Russia has been using the Norwegian town bordering its nuclear stronghold as a laboratory, testing intelligence operations there before replicating them across Europe.

Paolo Pellegrin | The New Yorker

Two people in hijab stand in the dark, one holding a brightly lit flare that casts a red glow.

NEW YORK CITY, United States

A young woman raises a flare to the sky as she stands on a platform in the middle of the CUNY-Gaza Solidarity Encampment. It wasn't uncommon to hear the snap and sizzle of student’s roadside flares as they were sparked at night. They'd illuminate everything in their proximity with a red hue, and shortly after hearing them, the air would become thick with smoke and the hearty chants of student protestors huddling together to stay warm and hold space through the brisk spring evenings during the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment at City College of New York’s Campus in Harlem, New York.

Marcos Quinones | Pulitzer Center

A large crowd holds illuminated phones during a night demonstration in front of a building with a dome and flags. The scene is dark and filled with glowing lights from the phones.

BERLIN, GERMANY

People hold up their cell phones as they protest the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party and right-wing extremism in front of the parliament building in Berlin. Millions of Germans have joined rallies all over the country for weeks in a row, attending events with slogans such as “Never Again is Now.” The protesters have been alarmed by the AfD’s policies and its growing popularity.

Ebrahim Noroozi | Associated Press

Two women sit on a floral-patterned sofa, holding a framed photo of a man. Behind them, a wall is decorated with family portraits. A pillow shaped like a dog's face rests on the couch.

Nizhny Novgorod, Russia

Zarina and Valentina hold a photograph of Pavel, who died in the Donbas in the fall of 2022, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. They told me that Pavel had been a taxi driver and had gone into debt. One night, he came home drunk and said he had enlisted. “He was a good man, respected,” Valentina said. “I couldn’t stop him. He did it for his three children, to pay off the mortgage.”

Alessandro Cosmelli | Harper's Bazaar

A group of masked police officers confront a woman outside a house. The woman appears to be shouting, while others, including a man and a child, observe from the doorway.

Guayaquil, ECUADOR

Marijuana and “H,” a white heroin-based powder are discovered during a police raid in Guayaquil. Some locals view the police with anger and distrust. Gang upheaval has, in less than a decade, disfigured great segments of Ecuadorian society. Over the past year Ecuador’s president has vowed to annihilate his country’s narco-traffickers by force.

Andrés Yépez | 1843 by The Economist

"This photograph was taken in Monte Sinaí, on the outskirts of Guayaquil, during a police drug search operation, as part of a story about the transformation Ecuador is undergoing due to violence and drug trafficking. The tension in the streets was palpable, with an air of uncertainty that had sadly become the norm for the community. Capturing this story was an intense experience, revealing how violence infiltrates every aspect of daily life.

The story sparked significant debate in the media and on social networks nationwide, offering a brief yet harsh portrait of the country’s reality. Being part of the story led me to an internal sensory debate about the different narratives surrounding what is happening in the country and the structural crisis we are living through."

Andrés Yépez

A person wearing a headscarf holds tomatoes in a garden.

Agali, Azerbaijan

Firengiz Salimova holds tomatoes in the garden of her new home in the village of Agali, where she returned after the Zangilan region was reclaimed by Azerbaijan in 2020.

Rena Effendi | Foreign Policy

On the right, an open pomegranate hangs from a vine, with seeds visible.

Agdam, Azerbaijan

A bursting pomegranate in Agdam. After three decades of conflict, Azerbaijan’s environmental imperatives are clashing with political and economic ones. In Agdam, they are starting to claw down the pomegranate trees to make way for the newly laid-out city. The first batch of former residents who have returned and resettled have been willing to withstand a strange isolation for the prize of coming home.

Rena Effendi | Foreign Policy

A woman wearing a colorful patterned head scarf sits on a hospital bed, cradling a shirtless boy with bandaged wrists. The boy lies partially on her lap. The room is bare.

Khartoum, SUDAN

A woman and her son at Al Nau Hospital in Khartoum after being injured in Omdurman. International aid organizations left Sudan when the fighting began a year and a half ago. Now, Sudanese youth are trying to keep starving civilians alive through emergency relief spaces.

Arthur Larie | NRC

Five women in matching green uniforms and caps stand in a row outdoors. They are standing in front of red flowers and greenery.

ARARIBOIA INDIGENOUS TERRITORY, Brazil

Some of the women who are part of the Guardians of the Forest group. José Maria Paulino Guajajara, whose son Paulo Paulino Guajajara was killed in an ambush by loggers in 2019—his mother and his brother-in-law were also allegedly killed by loggers—says illegal incursions by outsiders bordering his village have been going on for years. In response, a decade ago Guajajara set up the Guardians of the Forest network to defend the region.

Ingrid Barros | Mongabay

A woman wearing a colorful headscarf stands holding a smiling child. The child is wearing red.

Kolgaon, INDIA

On the night of July 20, 2018, a mob of Hindutva supporters killed Rakbar Khan, a dairy farmer, while he was walking home from a neighboring village with a milch cow. “My father would tell me that if I ever face any difficulty in my life, I should come to him but who do I share my pain with, now that he is gone,” she said. “Sometimes my heart is so heavy that I question my existence but then I look at the face of my son,” Sahila said.

Shefali Rafiq | Scroll.in

"'His smile heals me,' she had told me. So, one day, when Sahila finished her household chores and went inside the house to feed her son, while she was playing with him, I took this photograph because I could sense the happiness in her eyes while being with her son.

To me, this photograph captures the duality of Sahila’s experience—her struggle with grief against the joy and innocence of her young motherhood. 'My father would tell me that if I ever faced any difficulty, I should come to him. But who do I share my pain with now that he is gone,' she told me as she kept looking at her son—her only hope."

Shefali Rafiq

A group of eight soldiers in camouflage coats and white pants ski uphill in the snow.

Sodankylä, FINLAND

U.S. soldiers (in green) struggle to learn how to scale a slope while training with Finnish soldiers in Sodankylä. Finland has been preparing for war with Russia for more than eighty years—ever since the Soviet invasion at the beginning of World War II that led to the annexation of Finnish territory. After so many decades and billions of dollars spent on military exercises, they’ve achieved a kind of mastery of the use of artillery in this Nordic theater, and they’re happy to share this expertise with their neighbors. In fact, much of the weaponry and tactics Ukraine has been using in its fight against Russia have long been part of the Finnish strategy.

Louie Palu | Virginia Quarterly Review

A portrait of a woman making eye contact with the camera. Red threads are visible in the foreground; one cuts across the frame right below the woman’s chin.

Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo

Tapestry artist Lucie Kamuswekera poses for a portrait in her studio in Goma, Congo. For 30 years, the artist has documented war in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo with her needle and thread. Her works, which have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, depict the staggering human toll of a generation of unbroken conflict.

Hugh Kinsella Cunningham | The Christian Science Monitor

A tan tapestry features a colorful scene, including a blue house with a yellow roof, children wearing various colors sitting on a black tank, and three black mountains with their heights stitched in blue.

Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo

Lucie Kamuswekera's tapestry art that depicts the conflict involving the March 23 Movement, better known as M23, was photographed in her studio in Goma, Congo. Originally founded by disgruntled Congolese soldiers in 2012, the rebel group has grown more active over the last two years, allegedly backed by the governments of neighboring Rwanda and Uganda. The latest of these tapestries were rendered as the rebels encircled Goma in recent months.

Hugh Kinsella Cunningham | The Christian Science Monitor

A fisherwoman stands on the beach in front of a boat. She is wearing a blue dress, and holds her hands behind her back.

Illupaikadavai, SRI LANKA

A fisherwoman from the coastal village of Illupaikadavai, in Mannar district, Sri Lanka, which has seen coastal erosion and loss of fish stocks. Tamil nationalism faces a new challenge as the climate emergency spreads in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province and other Tamil-dominated areas, where the ravages of war and systemic discrimination have left the population especially vulnerable.

Isaac Nico | Himal Southasian

2024

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