The body of a suspected coronavirus victim, wrapped in yellow infectious waste plastic bags and wrappers, lies on the patient's deathbed awaiting a body bag in a hospital in Indonesia. Wrapping the patient, which takes two nurses a full hour to complete through three layers of plastic and nine disinfection procedures, is intended to suppress the spread of the coronavirus. As mandated by the Indonesian Ministry of Health, the wrapping of the body is standard procedure for every suspected, comorbid, and confirmed positive COVID-19 death. This process is ongoing today. As with most victims, family members were not allowed to say goodbye. After the image was published by National Geographic, it sparked denial and uproar across social media. Many who saw the image claimed it was staged to spread fear. By the end of the year, Indonesia’s coronavirus toll had reached over 800,000 cases and 20,000 deaths.

Refugees and migrants burn garbage bins and chant slogans as they demonstrate outside the Moria camp following the stabbing death of a 20-year-old man from Yemen on the Greek island of Lesbos, Friday, Jan, 17, 2020. Authorities arrested a 27 year-old Afghan migrant in connection with the incident. Overcrowding at Moria has steadily worsened over the past year as the number of immigrants and refugees using clandestine routes from Turkey to the Greek islands remains high totaling nearly 60,000 in 2019.

View of the damaged Dhauliganga hydroelectric power project in Chamoli District, Uttarakhand, India. At least 70 people died and nearly 130 are still missing after part of the Nanda Devi glacier fell into the river, triggering a flood that burst a dam in the Tapovan area on 07 February 2021.

A fire broke out in an edible oils warehouse in Kolkata, West Bengal. It spread at an alarming rate to the adjoining neighborhood, causing alarm among the locals. About 11 fire engines reached the fire immediately after being called in an effort to control the fire. Soon the entire area was covered by heavy smoke. Amidst the chaos, and surprising even the professionals, a local was seen trying to extinguish the fire. Unconcerned about the heat and smoke, risking his own life, he carried bucket after bucket of water in an attempt to save what little was left. Irrespective of how minor his part was that day, his valiant effort left us in awe.

Protesters demonstrate against police brutality and racism in Montreal, Canada, on June 7, 2020.

George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man suspected of passing a counterfeit $20 bill, died in Minneapolis after Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, pressed his knee to Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes. Thousands of National Guard troops patrolled major US cities after protests over racism and police brutality descended into arson and looting, sending shock waves through the country. Curfews were imposed as clashes with police escalated across America, with demonstrators ignoring warnings from President Donald Trump that his government would stop the violent protests "cold."

Dissent

The conflict in Eastern Ukraine is the bloodiest in Europe since the Balkan wars. According to the United Nations, civilian and military deaths standat almost 14,000, with more than 25,000 injured. According to unofficial sources, the numbers are much higher. The war in the Donbass region, caused by national, economic, political, language and other issues, is calling into doubt Ukraine’s continued viability as a country. It is becoming a frozen conflict with periodic surges in violence. The people living there are the war’s real victims, even as events in the war zone can have global political reverberations.

The Bloody Wound Of Europe

As Mexico’s homicide rate reached its highest level in six decades, the government released an even more alarming statistic: 80,517 people have disappeared since 2006. Hundreds of thousands of people have also fled their homes to escape violence, and the Mexican Congress is poised to pass the country’s first law to help the internally displaced. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has emphasized social programs to address the poverty at the root of the crime wave. Abrazos no balazos, he says: Hugs, not bullets. At the same time, he has created a 100,000-member national guard to reclaim areas with little state presence. It’s not clear that will make a significant difference. Kids learning how to defend their small town in the mountains and the arrest of Mexico’s former defense minister in the U.S. illustrate the complexity of the situation. It is the greatest crisis in Latin America since the “dirty wars” of the 1970s and 1980s.

Loosing Mexico's control

A large number of asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan and elsewhere gather in Turkey’s Edirne hoping to cross into Europe. They make their way there from many cities in Anatolia and especially from Istanbul.

Asylum seekers on move to reach Europe

On August 9, 2020, presidential elections were held in Belarus, followed by a wave of nationwide protests that continue unabated. The protesters mostly demand new fair elections, an end to police brutality and repressions and the release of political prisoners. Human rights organizations report numerous human rights violations. Over 1,000 detainees said they had been tortured during and after arrests, as well as at police stations and pre-trial detention centers. Seven people are reported killed.

Belarusian protests

A group of young people play parkour in the ruins. Because of the war they can’t train professionally in designated places.

Villages in deprived areas of Qaleh Ganj, a city in the south of the Kerman Province, Iran have benefited from a football field where young people can enjoy sports.

On Martyrs' Day, young wrestlers participate in a state level competition to mark the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 2020, in Kolkata, India.

Turkish swimmer Nil Sahin, who has won 180 medals, 95 of them gold, training in Istanbul, Turkey. She wants to win the world championship and Paralympic Games in 2021.

Darya Pavlyuchenko and Denis Khodykin perform a short program during the open skating of the Russian national figure skating team.

Athletes from all over the world were preparing for the Tokyo Olympics but the COVID-19 outbreak changed the plans of the entire humankind. Instead of training sessions and qualifying events, athletes found themselves stuck at home. I managed to arrange remote photo shoots via video calls and photographed athletes in their homes where they were still hoping to go to Tokyo and making sure to stay in shape. I took all the photos via FaceTime. The athletes’ friends and family members helped by holding up their phones while I positioned the frame remotely. This series is about the Olympic champions and Russia’s first-time representatives in Tokyo who had to hide from the pandemic at home.

Home Olympics

He hasn’t run for eight months. Ayuob’s impatience got the better of him one day. Not because he had been kicked out. Because they stole Iran’s gold from his neck. Ayuob won the Jakarta Para-Asian 2018 quota but was not selected for the tournament. The federation withdrew its quota for 400 meters and handed it over to a weightlifter. They thanked Ayuob for taking part and said that according to their calculations, if he went to the tournament, he would come in sixth, whereas the weightlifter would get the gold. So goodbye. Ayuob also said, God willing. He closed his mouth and said goodbye to Tehran. At his father's house, he turned on the TV and saw that, ironically, the opposite had happened. The athlete who took Ayuob's place finished sixth in weightlifting, and the runner-up record for the gold medal in 400 meters was just two seconds better than Ayuob's last record two months before the start of the Jakarta Games.

Patience, Ayuob...

Alexander Gombozhapov is a master of sports in archery. He achieved this title despite having no arms and only one leg. It’s been 17 years since the horrible tragedy that made Alexander an amputee. He is well adjusted to his new life now. He can handle housework, exercise, swim and even drive a car.

Gombozhapov: I overcome myself every day

There are only seven women’s American football teams in Russia. It is a non-professional sport so anyone can join. It’s all about personal enthusiasm so players often have to learn the rules and moves by themselves while coaching is simply done by more experienced players. Some women start playing American football because their friends invited them. Some are drawn by the exotic sport. Others simply want to become more athletic. Many drop out after the first training session: after all, it’s not only about strength and endurance but also about the ability to understand and remember formations. Those who stay find themselves a new family and a safe place for expressing emotions, including aggression. Young women admit that American football has made them braver and more decisive. They leave their comfort zone and broaden the boundaries of their usual routine. The sound of shoulder pads smashing against each other becomes their favorite sound.

On the field, anything goes

According to a report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), plastic waste equivalent to 33,880 plastic bottles enters the Mediterranean each minute. Most of the plastic waste washes up on the shores of Italy and Turkey. The medical waste from the pandemic reached the seas due to the human factor and wind. While the world’s plastic and garbage pose a great danger to our seas, medical waste, a new concern, points to bigger problems and irreversible environmental pollution. Turkish national free diver Şahika Ercümen dives into the Bosphorus after becoming a UNDP aquatic life advocate.

Every year on January 4, the Chinese city of Changchun hosts the opening ceremony of the Vasaloppet China cross-county ski race. In 2020, more than 1,000 athletes from 30 countries took part in the competition.

Lake Baikal is not only one of the most beautiful but also most mystic and sacred places on Earth. There are many natural, holy places on Lake Baikal connected to the locals’ beliefs in shaman spirits, where people worshipped them and made sacrifices. This lake is shrouded in legends and myths.Lake Baikal is full of mysteries. Its many natural “places of power” are closely linked to shamanism and spirit worship. This year I went on an expedition to Lake Baikal but was met only by cold, wind and conjunctivitis.

Circus elephants are bathing in murky river water.

Bangladesh is a country with six distinct seasons. Winter is one of such seasons. During winter, the temperature remains between 10°C and 12°C in many places, especially in the countryside where there is not much urbanization or human population. Because of this, winter comes in a variety of colors in Bangladesh. The fresh produce markets in rural areas get filled with colorful vegetables. Here a farmer shows off his harvest.

Desert locusts are the most destructive migratory pests in the world. Thriving in moist conditions in semi-arid to-arid environments, billions of locusts have been feeding throughout East Africa, devouring everything in their path, posing an unprecedented and serious threat to the food supply and livelihoods of millions of people. The plague was fueled by severe weather anomalies, linked to a climate-change driven event in the Indian Ocean, that created ideal conditions for locust breeding and turned East Africa into a buffet for locusts. The crisis reached historical proportions since some areas in the region like Kenya had not seen such severe desert locust outbreaks in more than 70 years. The desert locust invasion had devastating consequences, potentially causing large-scale crop damage and threatening food security in countries affected by drought, conflict, high food prices, and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic that significantly slowed efforts to fight the infestation.

Locust invasion in East Africa

The coronavirus pandemic: a crisis on this scale can reorder society in dramatic ways, for better or worse. It has changed everything in my environment from my father’s face to my city. The garden next door is like a cemetery. Micro or macro many things have changed taking on new meanings. In February 2020, Iran reported its first confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The coronavirus has spread quickly to other cities. My city, Mazandеran, has become one of the most dangerous areas, a virus red zone. As a photographer with many concerns, I was confronted by strange and unexpected moments, decisive and indecisive moments like in a transitional state. It feels like a tunnel in a transition between life before the coronavirus and after it. Facing our mortality prompts us to reevaluate our lives; I see a reevaluation of life in my environment. The pandemic has forced a reevaluation of life in detail. I started taking photos in my house to record my family; then I saw the risk and decided to leave.

Inside living cells

The 1458-kilometer border with Iraq is Iran’s longest land border with its neighbors. For a long time, this border has been comprised of the most important transaction and commercial ports Iran has with Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. However, importers still use the border to import goods. In so doing they hire local people, called porters (Koolbar in Kurdish), to transport goods from Iraqi Kurdistan into Iranian Kurdistan. According to estimates, 300 Koolbars die annually, 71 percent of whom are shot to death by border patrols. Mostly ranging in age from 13 to 65, Koolbars cross the border with heavy loads, taking an average of 8 to 12 hours — the routes running through life-risking locations including winding mountain trails, valleys, steep hills and other obstacle courses. The risk of being shot by a border patrol adds to the hazards Koolbars have to face in pursuit of a living.

Bullets have no borders

"Until the corn grows back" is a visual story about the roots of climate migration in Guatemala. In the indigenous communities of the highlands, the question is no longer if someone will leave, but when. Increasingly erratic climate patterns have produced year after year of failed harvests and dwindling work opportunities across the country, forcing thousands of people to try to escape skyrocketing levels of food insecurity and poverty. Over the last year, I worked with two Mayan families to create a record of daily life — their beliefs, hopes and struggles. I developed an intimate relationship with its people and I documented how malnutrition is not only widespread in Guatemala, which has the highest rates in Latin America, but has enormous consequences for individual and collective survival. Children suffering from malnutrition experience physical and cognitive constraints, which leads to perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

Until the corn grows back

This group of pictures about workers on offshore drilling platforms was taken in July 2020 in the northern part of the South China Sea. The Kantan No.3 is a semi-submersible oil platform developed domestically by China in 1983. Its 18 member well-drilling team works 12-hour shifts non-stop to find marine oil and gas resources, which are often found in sea beds 5,000 to 6,000 meters underwater. Life on the oil platform is characterized by toil and boredom, as the weather is scorching hot and there is no mobile phone signal. Typically, the drilling platform’s laborers work 28 consecutive days offshore before they can go onshore on a holiday of equal time. In over three decades since operations began, the Kantan No.3 has rigged more than 160 oil and gas wells.

Китайские бурильщики скважин в Южно-Китайском море_2020

A surgeon in an OR at a temporary medical facility for COVID-19 patients at Moscow City Hospital No. 15 (Filatov Hospital).

A portrait of Hassiba and her daughter “Wihad,” who was sexually harassed on her way back from school, even though Hassiba chose a safe area to live in Cairo after she fled Sudan and came to Egypt as a refugee. Since the incident, Wihad has refused to go to school without her mother, which is difficult because of Hassiba's work, so Wihad has skipped some days of school.

Tasnim (11), Medhi (6), and their grandfather Shukur Mia. Family members with an unusual pigmentation show off their shockingly bright, blue eyes. Eyes of this color are rare for people of a darker skin tone, and the cause is a lack of melanin pigment in the iris of the eye. Lower levels of melanin are more commonly found in people with lighter skin tones, meaning they are more likely to have lighter colored eyes. The grandfather's name is Shukur Mia, who is photographed with his granddaughter Tasnim and grandson Medhi.

A group of men, including Patrick Hutchinson (carrying the man), help an injured counter-protester away after he was attacked by a crowd of Black Lives Matter supporters on the Southbank on June 13, 2020 in London, United Kingdom. The man, later identified as Bryn Male, was, according to witnesses, “visibly inebriated” and told a BLM protester to “[expletive] off, nobody cares” before he was attacked and fell to the ground. In an interview, Male said, “They beat me senseless, and then two or three of them, including Patrick, came to rescue me. Patrick put me on his shoulder because he realized I was going to get killed.” Following a social media post by the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson, members of far-right linked groups gathered around statues in London that were targeted by Black Lives Matter protesters for their links to racism and the slave trade. Bryn said his decision to travel to the protests was motivated by his desire to protect these historic statues.

A portrait of Maria Elena Rios in a field of marigolds, the symbolic flower of Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead), in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. After surviving an attempted femicide – an acid attack by her ex-boyfriend in September 2019 – the 27-year-old saxophonist is now fighting for justice. Disfigured, it is through music and her instrument that she succeeded in being reborn and in finding the strength to continue her fight.

This is an intimate story about the love of an elderly couple with Down syndrome in the unique social village of Svetlana, which is home to people with various mental and physical disorders, as well as their mentors and volunteers. It is not an asylum or a clinic. Every resident is valued as a person, and everyone works for the common good. Minya and Tatyana met each other in this village and fell in love in 2015. They are over 50 years old. I witnessed this couple get to know each other and can see how happy they have been ever since. They take care of each other, spend their free time together and worry about each other’s health. They cherish every minute of their time together. Love for them is not something ordinary, but a rare stroke of luck. Minya and Tatyana work as bakers, and also help with cooking and cleaning. They also act in plays and paint. Many believe that people with Down syndrome are incapable of love, but it is not true. Love knows no bounds.

М+T

Kashmir, a disputed territory between India and Pakistan, has been living in a state of conflict since 1989. The genesis of the dispute goes back to 1947, when the Indian subcontinent was divided after the end of the British imperial rule in the region. Over the last 25 years, the humanitarian cost of the conflict has been enormous. Since the armed insurgency broke out against Indian rule in 1989, more than 90,000 people have died. There are thousands of orphans and widows. Detention, rape and torture have become routine. For the last three decades, Kashmiris have been living under the shadow of the gun, with over half a million Indian soldiers occupying every corner of the state. Black laws give Indian forces impunity to kill or arrest anyone without fear of prosecution. Gunfights, funerals and wailing women are commonplace scenes that unfold in the region on a daily basis.

Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy

In Russia, about 60,000 children suffer burns each year, with 25,000 requiring hospitalization. A severe burn is a complex injury that leads to significant changes in the lives of children and their families. Treatment of burns involves severe pain and prolonged hospitalizations. Those who have suffered severe burns develop scarring that changes their appearance and can restrict mobility. The medical rehabilitation required to deal with it is a long-term process, and repeated operations are often necessary. Psychologists and social workers help young burn victims and their family members to adapt to the treatment process and hospital life, and coordinate care with their doctors. Lyosha and Vika were seriously injured in a fire as young children. After numerous operations and a lengthy socialization process, they are now fully grown and trying to find their place in the world. Lyosha is studying to become an IT specialist and Vika wants to become a Cynologist.

Phoenix story

Repeatedly beaten, arrested and harassed by security forces, Bobi Wine gave hope to thousands of Ugandans while running against the president of 35 years, Yoweri Museveni, in the 2021 election. The election campaign was marred by violence – at least 54 people were killed by security forces during protests against Wine’s arrest in November 2020. And since then, there have been countless reports of opposition figures and supporters being arrested and tortured. Mr. Wine even started campaigning in a bulletproof vest midway through the campaign after his car was shot at in Jinja, with a bullet piercing the windshield. In an interview with the New York Times, Wine said “I know they want me dead as soon as yesterday, we are campaigning every day as if it’s the last." Museveni was declared the winner of the election. Wine insists he won, and accuses the military of stuffing ballot boxes, casting ballots for other people and chasing voters away from polling stations.

Bobi Wine

Who are the people who test us, who help us when we have shortness of breath, who care for us when nothing works anymore? Although the number of people in need of care in our aging society continues to rise, and almost every second person dies in the hospital, it took a pandemic to make us realize how vitally important medical professionals really are. People in their home offices applauded from balconies, and politicians sang the praises of these "heroes of everyday life". The project "There is glory in prevention" gives voice to the people who are exposed every day to the invisible danger of the coronavirus. Since the beginning of the pandemic in March, Patrick Junker has been photographing nurses and doctors at work in Stuttgart's Marien hospital and the Corona test mobile. He has accompanied patients and their relatives, portrayed people struggling with the consequences of the lockdown, and photographed those committed to ending it.

There is glory in prevention