2017 Sony World Photography Best Photos Will Take Your Breath Away

Racism in India: The African Portraits. "Anywhere in the world, it takes a black person to tell us what racism really feels like. On January 31st, 2016, India woke up to yet another news of a shocking mob attack against a Tanzanian student. This particular one was appalling enough to earn international press and force the nation into a period of soul-searching. Since the incident, I've been travelling across the country to meet Africans and learn about their experiences. I make portraits as a personal response to give them recognition. “It's as if they don't accept us as human beings,” is what I keep hearing amidst all the heartrending stories. “Some of us are from royal families, but here we are treated like shit,” one person told me. I feel passionately for this developing project because it carries such a relevant and urgent message. It is about Africans, but it is just as much about India and its chronic racism problem that has thus far not received enough airtime. A country that aspires to be a superpower is now at the cusp of coming to terms with good old fashioned racism. Through my project, I seek to put Africans as well as the racism they face in the consciousness of the Indian public."

NI UNA MENOS. In Argentina femicide,the killing of women,it's a new category of crime recorded in the Criminal Code in 2012 and it's punished by life imprisonment.Despite the tightening of legislation,murders of women are increasing in the country.Currently, according to statistics,a woman is killed every thirty hours.In the spring of 2015, there had been a succession of atrocious crimes: women burned alive, hacked to pieces with machetes, even a pregnant woman killed by her boyfriend and buried in the garden of grandparents.In those days it was created by the feminist collective Ni una menos,a protest movement against violence towards women. Since 2015 this collective, with unprecedented success, is mobilizing the masses against gender violence.The problem is common in all the country, more in the northern provinces that are the more traditional.Particularly serious is the in the many Villas of the cities,slums located sometimes very close to the city centers where people live in poor condition,criminality is very high and the youngster are in danger.Here gender violence is also due to the patriarchal composition of the society(the majority of people are immigrants from Paraguay,Peru, Bolivia who are very traditional).Often young girls leave the family Home in which they suffer domestic violence for a love affair with people belonging to gangs who introduce them to the world of the drug or they become victims of the human traffic,kidnapped and forced to prostitution.Only In Buenos Aires there are 1500 brothels ,40000 in the country.Frequently girls between 13 and 16 get pregnant.Often police doesn't take the reports, corruption is very common and women suffer domestic and psychological violence for years.

Alternative teaching. What happens, when 28 schoolchildren meet the controversial Danish therapist Carl-Mar Møller and are encouraged to play freely without rules? A sixth grade class from Øster Farimagsgade, a School in Copenhagen has done it twice. They went from the posh part of central Copenhagen to muddy wildness in Kokkedal, Denmark.

ATHENS STUDIO. Prostitution is legal in Greece and the Greek authorities recently decided to implement a 1999 law that stipulates that all brothels must have permits. There are different kinds of brothels, and the top class ones are called Studio. There are a number of differences from normal brothels. The buildings are more discreet, cleaner and tidier, and the prostitutes are more polite in comparison with the normal ones. The price is also higher, around 50 euro. There is a person at the entrance welcoming the clients, and once inside there is a waiting room where the girls available come out to show themselves. At this point, the client can decide whether to stay or to leave. If they decide to stay, a negotiation begins to agree pricing, services and time. These brothels are usually recognisable by a pink neon sign with the word Studio at the front door.

Errance(s). """Every photograph is a miniature world, the fragment of a story that only needs to be told, a landscape of my imagination."" Julien Caidos invites us to a stroll in an urban setting, with an antiquated atmosphere. Trompe-l'oeil three-dimensional, falsification, this decoration of city assumed is at the service of the wandering of its inhabitants. This photographic series, whose aesthetics reflect an omnipresent nostalgia, questions about human solitude. Would not this decoration be the reflection of the one we are building to coat our lives with beautiful facades and rectilinear paths to follow in times of internal turmoil. A reassuring but artificial conditioning, since the characters continue their wandering in these anonymous streets. Even a walk under the sun leads a man to be threatened by the specter of a tree with a monstrous silhouette. In the end, this big chimney engulfs us, and then, nothing. ""Scenes carefully staged in a studio transform themselves into a cliche in the city, streets, buildings and interiors that host characters dragging with them their intimate stories, as if suspended in a still time. I use photography because in front of photography, we always have the feeling that what we see is real, even if we know that it is a model or a set. Similar to photographic paintings, street scenes freeze and intertwine dream, fiction and memories to transport the viewer into an imaginary and nostalgic space."

Russia Close-Up. Inspired by the work of A.Siskind, R.Gibson and M.Parr, I’m trying to visualise those trends and going-ons which I feel are important to document in modern Russia.

"We are taking no prisoners". Series Description: The offensive to liberate Sirte, self-proclaimed capital of the so-called Islamic State in Libya, was launched in May. It took seven months of fighting, five hundred American airstrikes, seven hundred soldiers dead and more than three thousand injured in the Libyan army ranks, to declare the city finally free. The offensive has been slow and fierce. The Libyan soldiers were mostly civilians with no military training. The leaders of the operation also considered it their priority to save the civilians (women and children) trapped in Sirte. But in the last weeks of the offensive, the distinction between civilians and militants became vague; some women, allegedly the wives of ISIS militants, blew themselves up while Libyan soldiers were trying to save them. Today Sirte is a ghostly place. No one knows exactly how many ISIS militants were in Sirte at the start of the offensive, nor how many of them have been killed. What is certain is that the Libyan soldiers have taken no prisoners, and today in Sirte there are dozens of corpses buried in the rubble.

Rivera Hernandez in the second city of Honduras, lives in constant war. With five warring gangs and a rate of three bodies of average daily routine is an exercise in survival.

Youth of the UK. "The young are the future. But young people suffer higher rates in unemployment, injustice and violence than all other groups in their society. Especially deprived neighbourhoods of former industrial cities within the UK had huge problems with drug abuse, gang fights and teenage pregnancies at a disproportionately high level compared to the rest of Europe. Several government programms improved the situation within the last ten years and both offences committed by 16-17s and alcohol and drug taking of 16-24s dropped. But unemployment and the related lack of perspectives remain a big issue. Young people are nearly three times more likely to be unemployed than the rest of the population – in Northern Ireland and Scotland even more. It has clearly emerged as one of the main reasons for sliding into delinquency. In 2011 youth surveys analyzed that around 2-7% of young people aged between 10 and 19 years report being a gang member. This small group have a disproportionate impact on the communities around them. I met youths of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast mainly on the streets. Playing football, cards and marbles but the older ones also smoking, drinking and selling and using drugs. I’ve been talking to them about their wishes and fears of the future and captured this overall picture of a generation in my photo essay. The Brexit decision at the 2016 EU Referendum will have significant economic, social, political and cultural consequences – and none more so than for the futures of these young people."

China West. In western China, the pace of economic development has ushered in a new and unprecedented period of transformation, one that has radically redefined the topography of the country whilst displacing significant parts of its population from rural areas to vast, newly-built mega cities. Semi-deserted landscapes carry a profound ambivalence, suggesting at the same time fecundity and sterility, a promise and nothingness. China West is a visual exploration of the impact economic development has had on western China’s landscape, focusing on the dwindling interstice left between nature and urbanisation, a space, which, perhaps more than any other, reveals the true process of change.

"We are taking no prisoners." The offensive to liberate Sirte, self-proclaimed capital of the so-called Islamic State in Libya, was launched in May. It took seven months of fighting, five hundred American airstrikes, seven hundred soldiers dead and more than three thousand injured in the Libyan army ranks, to declare the city finally free. The offensive has been slow and fierce. The Libyan soldiers were mostly civilians with no military training. The leaders of the operation also considered it their priority to save the civilians (women and children) trapped in Sirte. But in the last weeks of the offensive, the distinction between civilians and militants became vague; some women, allegedly the wives of ISIS militants, blew themselves up while Libyan soldiers were trying to save them. Today Sirte is a ghostly place. No one knows exactly how many ISIS militants were in Sirte at the start of the offensive, nor how many of them have been killed. What is certain is that the Libyan soldiers have taken no prisoners, and today in Sirte there are dozens of corpses buried in the rubble.

ATHENS STUDIO. Prostitution is legal in Greece and the Greek authorities recently decided to implement a 1999 law that stipulates that all brothels must have permits. There are different kinds of brothels, and the top class ones are called Studio. There are a number of differences from normal brothels. The buildings are more discreet, cleaner and tidier, and the prostitutes are more polite in comparison with the normal ones. The price is also higher, around 50 euro. There is a person at the entrance welcoming the clients, and once inside there is a waiting room where the girls available come out to show themselves. At this point, the client can decide whether to stay or to leave. If they decide to stay, a negotiation begins to agree pricing, services and time. These brothels are usually recognisable by a pink neon sign with the word Studio at the front door.

Ecuador Earthquake "The 2016 Ecuador earthquake occurred on April 16 at 18:58:37 ECT with a moment magnitude of 7.8 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). The very large thrust earthquake was centered approximately 29 km (18 mi) from the towns of Muisne and Pedernales in a sparsely populated part of the country, and 170 km (110 mi) from the capital Quito, where it was felt strongly. Regions of Manta, Pedernales and Portoviejo accounted for over 75 percent of total casualties. Manta's central commercial shopping district Tarqui was completely destroyed. Widespread damage was caused across Manabi province, with structures hundreds of kilometres from the epicenter collapsing. At least 661 people were killed and 27,732 people injured. President Rafael Correa declared a state of emergency; 13,500 military personnel and police officers were dispatched for recovery operations."

Latidoamerica. The war is over, but in the Central American country's murder rate keeps growing like its neighbor, Honduras. In one of the most violent places in the world, youth gangs terrorize a population that does not expect much of anything. Failed hardline strategies and political negotiation, gangs have retaken the streets and manage chaos.