Varanasi, India

‘The city of spiritual splendour, where the Ganges’ water flows with tender grace. The city’s heart beats in the temple bells, whose echoes ring through the morning-misted veil. As boats glide softly where the river swells, even the winds tell a tale here.’

Photograph: Troy Shepherd

Argentine photographer Sara Facio, the author of many iconic pictures of Argentine artists like Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges, and Astor Piazzolla, died on Tuesday at 92.

Her death was confirmed by the Maria Elena Walsh Foundation, which she created and ran since 2018. The foundation promoted the work of Facio’s longtime partner, musician, writer, and activist María Elena Walsh, and recently added Facio’s name to its official name.

“We’ll remain faithful to her convictions, honoring the path she set forth for us,” the foundation posted on their Instagram account. 

Culture Secretary Leonardo Cifelli praised Facio, calling her “a tireless worker who elevated the art of photography.” “Her work left us an invaluable legacy for the cultural heritage of Argentina and the world,” he said in a press statement. 

Born in 1932 in San Isidro, Buenos Aires, she graduated from the National School of Fine Arts in 1953 and continued her studies in France. After her return to Argentina, she made a career as a photojournalist under the guidance of legendary photographer Annemarie Heinrich. 

In 1968, she published Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, her first book of photos, co-authored with Heinrich and featuring texts by writer Julio Cortázar. Facio also published a book on the history of Argentine photography: La fotografía en la Argentina: desde 1840 a nuestros días.

Facio created the first publishing house specializing in photo books, La Azotea, and founded the San Martín Theater Photogallery in 1985 in Buenos Aires. 

Some of her photos ran in Argentina’s main newspapers, and her work includes some of the most iconic portraits of great Argentine and Latin American artists, including Cortázar, Rodolfo Walsh, Alejandra Pizarnik, and Nobel Prize winners Pablo Neruda and Gabriel García Márquez, among many others. 

Petals flying in a flurry from a blossoming cake, a ‘Last Supper’ with women only, appetizing desserts and joyful meals around the world are among the deliciously evocative images that have won the celebrated Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year 2024 contest.

The beautiful and haunting image, Red Bean Paste Balls, shot by Chinese photographer Zhonghua Yang,in the rural area of Xiangshan, Zhejiang, during busy preparations for a feast at the Spring Festival, won the overall prize of the world’s leading competition celebrating food photography and film.

The Overall Winner of Food Photographer of the Year 2024 — a woman entering a room to add her latest creation to a mountain of steaming dim sum — was honored with a £5,000 prize.

“This wonderful, perfectly balanced image is full of light, shadow, mystery and poignancy,” said Caroline Kenyon, Founder, Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year. “It is clear a celebratory feast is being prepared. The food is exquisitely made, its circular shapes contrasting with the angularity of the fretwork screens, through which the light pours. Meanwhile, the woman who has made the food, weary, carries in yet another tray. Her role is to labor and to serve, while the guests party and enjoy.”

The winners of the 36 categories chosen from thousands of entries submitted from more than 65 countries were announced at an awards ceremony that gathered stars of the food and arts world in London.

“Despite the challenges of an ever-changing world, we never cease in growing, gathering, cooking, eating and celebrating with food,” says Phil Turnbull, CEO of APAL, owner of Pink Lady® and headline sponsor of the Awards. “Each year, the remarkable photographs serve as a reminder of the fundamental role of food in every culture and every people around the world.”

See the online gallery of all the 2024 finalists here

Entries for the 2025 edition of the competition will open in September.

Overall Winner

In the rural area of Xiangshan, Zhejiang, people are busy with preparations for the feast to celebrate Spring Festival, also know as Lunar New Year. This includes the tradition of making dim sum, such as red bean dumplings, steamed rice cakes and glutinous rice cake, each of which has a legacy of traditional craftsmanship.

Julielianne Medeiros Domingos’s stunning Female Last Summer showcases both the power of the universe and feminine creativity.

A Burmese fisherman attempts to make a catch in a mangrove forest. The early morning rays of the sun convey magic to the atmosphere.

Photographed in Licheng County, Shanxi Province, China, the farmyard offers a bountiful harvest of grain and bananas. The elderly and children enjoy lunch together, with laughter.

Buri is Japanese for the fish Seriola quinqueradiata, known in English as ‘yellowtail’. For centuries, fishermen filleted buri, salted them, dried them for about 10 days and finally wrapped them in leaves and long rice-straw ropes before hanging them in front of their houses, exposed to the sea breeze.

Creating this image as a symbol of long-awaited spring was a pure joy. Blood oranges are incredible for their texture, color and shine, all of which are captured here.

Chestnuts symbolize Autumn harvest, according to photographer Tailai O’Brien: “In our family, with strong Celtic roots, they are considered guardians of men and animals. The antique chestnut roaster is a family heirloom and nods to our farming heritage. The crested dove symbolizes harmony and virility. Chestnuts are highly nutritious and a delicious food for celebrations.”

Paul Dodd created a set piece showcasing all the ingredients in cocktails sold by a local cocktail bar.

The Brokpas are a small ethnic group living primarily in the territory of Ladakh, India. The Brokpas traditionally claim to be descendants of Alexander’s lost army. Brokpa diet is based on locally grown barley and wheat prepared most often as tsampa (roasted flour) and Gur-Gur Cha, a brewed tea made of black tea, butter and salt.

Two women enjoy ice cream at the Pujllay Festival in Tarabuco, Bolivia.

This enticing autumn cocktail features pumpkin juice and maple syrup.

This radish salad plays with shapes, colors and texture.

Every evening, Ayesha makes packets of ‘Hawaii sweets’ by herself. The next day, at six in the morning, she and daughter Hanufa walk to various streets and children’s schools in their village in Bangladesh to sell the sweets. They earn about 300 taka per day (around $2.50). With those earnings, she somehow supports her family and business.

At the start of rice season, a young farmer carries a rack of rice sprouts across a paddy field in Sakon Nakhon province, Thailand.

As the sun gracefully descends on the horizon, casting a magical and ethereal golden glow, a tribal woman engages in the ancient practice of threshing rice grains in the courtyard of her home with rhythmic movements by skilfully tossing the harvested rice into the air.

Boats fan out across a stretch of the lake, creating a floating market selling an array of fresh fruit. This is a floating market of seasonal fruits such as jackfruit, pineapple and mango at Rangamati, Bangladesh. The tribal farmers sell their fruit every morning at minimum price on a wholesale basis.

Hiroshi Sugimoto unveils his latest series of photographs with the Optical Allusion exhibition. It is on display at Lisson Gallery in New York City. Sugimoto is recognized for his work in capturing blurry abstract images of refracted daylight and it is showcased along the real prism that was actually used for the formation.

Visitors can have a tangible experience with time and light as they reflect throughout the entire space. The exhibition highlights the photographs that are large in size for a dynamic experience as each one measures about 4 feet square and displays a blurry gradient of tones. Each one is the result of a custom prism that refracts daylight onto the wall before being altered.

Image Credit: Hiroshi Sugimoto

We spotlight the Dazed Club zine-makers who showcased their work at this month’s Inventory Art Book Fair

The Gila Wilderness in New Mexico was, in 1924, the first designated wilderness area in the world. Forester Aldo Leopold’s concept was to create a pristine place untouched by man – there would be no mechanised vehicles or buildings, but horses, rafts, hunting and fishing would be allowed. How we designate a wilderness hasn’t really changed in the last century. In some ways, Gila was ahead of its time – in the early 20th century, nobody was really thinking about conserving the land. But they also forgot about the people living in this area: the Chiricahua Apache had been there for 200 years, and the Mogollon before that. The Gila is an example of how contradictory conservation can be, back then and now.

One of the most interesting examples of this is the elk. These were once widespread in the Gila region, but were gradually hunted out. In the 1970s, the Forest Service reintroduced Rocky Mountain elk – but since the elk don’t know how to survive in the desert conditions, they had to build water tanks, even though construction was against the principles of conservation. Fifty years on, the elk are part of the reason people visit.

The elk are also important to people who live in the region. Lainey, who appears in this image, has deep family ties to the Gila. Her maternal great-grandfather was the first homesteader in the region after the defeat of the Apache by the American military. On her father’s side, she has Pueblo and Navajo ancestry. I had met her because her father runs the only store in the town I was staying in while working on my story, America’s First Wilderness, for National Geographic.

I had been going back and forth to the Gila between 2020 and 2023, and Lainey is one of the few youths and the only young girl I met who was training to hunt. But gender doesn’t matter as much as keeping the tradition alive, and passing down the knowledge. I am fascinated by the way Indigenous communities hunt. It is a huge part of their culture and spirituality. I have deep respect for those who do it.

The first elk hunt is a special moment. Families in the Gila depend on the meat, and they thank the animal and bless it for its sacrifice. Marking the hunter’s cheeks with the animal’s blood is a family tradition practised by many – a symbol of success that honours the hunter’s first harvest. From the age of 10 or 11, children learn how to hunt as part of a Forest Service training programme.

I had gone out on horseback for a number of days with Lainey, her brother and father. You never know when the animals are going to show up – these elk know they’re hunted and they’re pretty skittish. After a couple of nights camping, we spotted about 30 – the biggest herd I’d ever seen. We were on a slope and had a clear view. With the guidance of her father, Lainey took aim and shot. When we got down to where the animal had fallen, she had to shoot again – I imagine that is the hardest part. After she got the elk, she cried. When the harvesting and processing was done and the family had said a prayer, I took Lainey’s portrait.

I came to photography through activism. I care a lot about social issues and politics, and photography became a way to explore them. I used to photograph conflicts and news, but after an assignment covering dog sled races in the Canadian Yukon, I became more interested in the climate crisis and the environment. Now my work is often environmental and nature-focused. Recently, I have been concentrating on solution stories. My goal – albeit idealistic – is to change people’s minds and raise awareness about environments and cultures at risk due to the climate crisis.

With the Gila story, it is more about the idea of conservation – about rethinking ethical conservation and how to protect wild places. I wanted this portrait to foster empathy and connection – and to make the viewer want to ask questions. Indigenous people are doing incredible work to protect the environment and they have so many answers. They’ve been out there the whole time, quietly saving the planet. We need to pay attention.

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Kathleen Orlinsky’s CV

Born: New York, 1983
Trained: Self-taught
Influences: Graciela Iturbide, Sebastião Salgado, Susan Meiselas
High point: “So many. But one recent one was two summers ago, when after years of trying and days camping and hiking alone in the wilderness, I finally found myself in the middle of 50,000 western Arctic caribou as they migrated through one of the most remote parts of Alaska. I’ll never forget lying on the tundra behind a rock, feeling the landscape hum beneath me as I photographed tens of thousands of these incredible creatures pass by.”
Low point: “Losing colleagues and friends covering conflict.”
Top tip: “Kindness and respect for others – from the people and communities we photograph, to the people we work with and meet along the way. Photographers might spend a lot of time alone, but we absolutely cannot do this work alone. It’s so important to build true friendships and connections.”

Kathleen Orlinsky is the winner of the Sustainability Prize, Sony World Photography Awards 2024. Highlights from this year’s awards are on display at the Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini, Milan, Italy until 29 September, the book is available at shop.worldphoto.org

Until fairly recently, Militarie Gun was a Regional Justice Center side project. Ian Shelton started the frantic, fearsome Seattle powerviolence band Regional Justice Center when his brother Max was sentenced to six years in prison, and they’ve released a series of absolutely blazing hardcore records. He started Militarie Gun as a solo project, when he was stuck at home during the pandemic. Since then, Militarie Gun have blown the fuck up, and RJC have been relatively inactive. But now, RJC are coming back.

Regional Justice Center released their album Crime & Punishment in 2021, and they played their most recent live set at the 2022 Sound And Fury festival. Now, Max Shelton is back home, and he’s making music. Shelton has been teasing what might be the final RJC record, which has already been recorded. Yesterday, he announced that the band will return with an August 4 show at Midnight Hour in San Fernando, California. It sold out almost immediately, even with the caveat that the show is for “no photographers, only real people.” UPDATE: The show got moved to a bigger room, and there are more tickets tickets now.

The context: Ian Shelton has an ongoing bit about how the stages at hardcore shows are too crowded with photographers. In RJC, he plays drums while singing, and you can understand the idea that he wouldn’t want a whole bunch of cameras between him and the crowd. It’s a hyper-niche concern, and a great hardcore-show photo can last forever. Still, pretty funny.