Communist ideals provided inspiration for millions of people during the 19th and 20th centuries. In the practice of the totalitarian regimes that called themselves communist, these ideals were however discarded in favour of repression. The fall of the Iron Curtain and the triumph of free market ideology in the late 20th century seemed to be the coup de grâce for political parties that struggled for greater social and economic equality – and even the economic crisis has not changed that. Yet communist ideals live on in various countries among small groups of faithful Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyites and Maoists. In his series Red Twilight Jan Banning recorded the party offices of these groups.

During the civil wars in Sierra Leone (1989-1996 and 1999-2003) and Liberia (1991-2002) Charles Taylor brought suffering beyond human reckoning – not only in Sierra Leone and Liberia, but also in Guinea-Bissau and Ivory Coast. Hundreds of thousands got killed, often in massacres, and millions of refugees and displaced. 

During ten years portuguese journalist Pedro Rosa Mendes and german photographer Wolf Böwig traveled the region to document these West African wars. Their work has been recognized and published in newspapers and publications around the world, leading to a Pulitzer Nomination in 2007. 

Their reportages are often snapshots of incomprehensible horror from all fronts of these wars, while at the same time a sensitive approach to the plight of traumatized victims and perpetrators alike. During their many years of collaboration, Mendes and Böwig kept asking themselves the same question over and over again how to present the incomprehensible, the unspeakable, the unimaginable through word and image. Is it even possible to document the breakdown of what we consider human and at the same time restore some of the victims dignity?

Under the label “The Charles Taylor Wars”, an international lineup of illustrators and artists create a crossover version of the reports, merging illustration, photography and written word. Through the collaboration of artists, photographer, authorc as well as local eyewitnesses, Black.Light Project creates the fragments for fifteen different stories in a series of workshops. The work will be presented in galleries and public venues in Europe, Africa and the United States and later on be published in a book.

Black.Light Project aims at creating synergies and a transcontinental dialogue that goes far beyond of what traditional war correspondence can achieve. Photography, journalistic reports, graphics and popular comicbook style merge into one homogeneous non-linear storytelling, creating a new publishing medium of its own.

With its casual semi-nudity, the street scene in Brazil may suggest an impression of tolerance and liberal thinking, but the figures tell a different story. Over the past four years violence against homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals has tripled in Brazil. In response to this, Diana Blok was asked by the Dutch Embassy to record the LGBT community there, as she previously did in Turkey with her series See Through Us. Blok's encounters with gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals resulted in personal disclosures about the search for a sexual identity in a thoroughly conservative society.

In the town of Pudasjärvi in central Finland there are more reindeer than people. An aging population and the departure of young people for the cities means that the number of residents has fallen sharply. That has caused the town to set an unusual goal for itself: by 2018 one out of ever ten residents must be an immigrant. In her series Walking on Rivers Laura Böök follows the Congolese families who, after having lived more than fifteen years in refugee camps, have now settled in Pudasjärvi. At the same time she follows the town's transition, as it wrestles with redefining its identity.

For this project, the residents on the outskirts of the city state of Honk Kong – farmers, gardeners, teachers, and people who have lived there their entire lives – donated their home-grown plants to Hongkongers in densely populated city districts. In doing so, they share their idyllic surroundings and love for nature, and point out that greenery is highly important for clean air in smog-polluted cities. In exchange, the urbanites made 'sunny dolls', an old countryside tradition where a handmade doll symbolises sunlight and a healthy life. The outskirts, however, are threatened by the Chinese megacity of Shenzhen, which lies directly on the border of Hong Kong and is one of the fastest growing cities on the planet. Due to the economic cooperation with Hong Kong, people on the outskirts are forced to give up their houses, fields, and fresh air. Urban development, focused on consumption and laziness, consequently inflicts irreversible damage to the natural environment.

With his series New Era José Luis Cuevas suggests a spiritual quest that leads people along obscure paths. Its ambiguous character evokes the general malaise of a society which rejects spirituality while at the same time fanatically trusting supernatural forces in seeking to manipulate their own reality. Through the eternal struggle between good and evil, the finite and the infinite, life and death, there appear to be glimmers of hope from prophecies that promise a way of escape, but they are nothing more than a metaphor for a world in which loathing, fear and despair are triumphant.

Working from the idea that youth equals unlimited possibilities, Loulou d'Aki did portraits of young people in the Middle East following Arab Spring. Just before she made the photos, she asked the young people about their dreams and ambitions for the future. By doing this, d'Aki hoped to record as honest an image of them as possible. Her photos reveal how life goes on and dreams and aspirations continue to exist, no matter what the circumstances. Whether they will come true, does not matter. According to d'Aki, the most important thing is that they exist.

The Cameroonian activist Christopher Achobang has devoted his life to the defense of the human rightsof the Mbororo minority, who are being driven off their land by the rise of large scale palm oil plantations. Achobang is a thorn in the flesh of the local authorities and has learned how to get around their opposition, but remains at loggerheads with them, and has more than once received death threats. James Whitlow Delano followed Achobang and the villagers and farmers for whom he stands up.

Tom Fecht (West-Duitsland, 1952) studeerde in New York en Berlijn en werkte daarna als ingenieur, uitgever en redacteur. In 1992 lanceerde hij op de vijfjarige kunsttentoonstelling Documenta IX zijn artistieke carrière als beeldhouwer. Sinds de late jaren negentig geeft hij de voorkeur aan fotografie als kunstvorm. Tom Fecht woont en werkt afwisselend in Berlijn, Bordeaux en Bretagne.

The Hambacher Forst, one of Germany's oldest woodlands, lies midway between Cologne and South Limburg. The enormous hunger for brown coal on the part of the RWE Power Company however threatens to be fatal for the woodlands: recovering the brown coal from under the woods is only possible once it has been cut down. To protest gainst an anachronistic energy policy that still supports massive energy companies in the burning of fossil fuels, an action group occupied the woods, settling in treehouses there. Markus Feger photographed the demonstrators, who not only protest, but have also lived in harmony with nature and their ideals for more than two years now – despite their conflict with the police and RWE security.

On the decommissoned Tempelhof Airport in Berlin small collectives are seeking alternatives for the globalized food industry. With their vegetable gardens they reinforce the consciousness of the sources of food and strengthen social and cultural integration. Katharina Fitz recorded their garden plots through the four seasons. Each season produced hundreds of separate photos taken from three metres up, which were assembled into one image. In that way Urban Gardening Patchwork visualizes the power each individual has to break through established structures.

Since the military junta withdrew to their barracks in 2011, Myanmar would appear to be headed for an unexpectedly sunny future. A lot, however, depends on the elections in 2015. For these to be held in a fair manner, large parts of the 2008 constitution, written by the military, will have to be rewritten. The parlement, a large part of which is made up of former military officers, indeed appears to be ready to make the necessary changes. That will mean that for the first time since the coup by General Ne Win in 1962, the Burmese will have the prospect of a smoothly functioning democracy. With her series In a Quest for Utopia Ana Galan pays homage to the people who risk prison sentences – and even their lives – in the struggle for democracy and freedom.

People lead more sustainable lives once they have more of an understanding of the basic principles of the 'next economy', states Douglas Gayeton. With this in mind, he founded, together with his wife, The Lexicon of Sustainability to convey these principles through film and photography and to enthuse the public. In his series The New Face of Food and Farming in America, Gayeton uses photography to explain agricultural terms, and in doing so is able to show and research a popular development: the local production of food.

About eight million of the 175 million migrant workers in the world come from Bangladesh. Every year thousands of Bangladeshis pay large sums to employment brokers to arrange jobs in other countries. But most of the times the search for a better life ends in harsh reality. Once the workers arrive in the new country, the jobs often turn out to be quite different from what was promised: the jobs may not even exist, or the workers are picked up because they were given false papers. Because as the employee of a travel agency he had seen these bad-faith practices himself, Khaled Hasan decided to follow the migrant workers with his camera. It struck him how quickly the uneducated workers became accepting of  the adverse circumstances of their new lives.

Every year something called the Campus Party, one of the largest LAN parties in Europe, is organized in Valencia, Spain. About 8000 young people, from software designers and gamers to hackers, proponents of free software and digital adepts, plug their computers into a Local Area Network (LAN) so that they can communicate with each other. Photographer Roc Herms recorded how they live in front of their computer for a week, busily exchanging programs, knowledge and experiences. For these apostles of the digital age computers and the internet are more than just handy and fun. They are second nature for them, an essential component of their identity and the virtual environment where they live a large part of their life.

All across Africa technology centres and hi-tech laboratories are springing up like mushrooms. From Senegal to Uganda and from Cameroon to Kenya glass fibre cables are laying the foundations for a new era of African innovation. From all over the continent – and the world – these hubs draw young, creative and ambitious students, programmers, entrepreneurs and investors. In his series Inside Africa's Hubs Jonathan Kalan engages in a visual voyage of discovery through this pan-African mosaic of innovation, start-ups and technology which is changing the continent for ever.

In Lisbon, 80 hectare of vacant land has been occupied by the city's citizens and is used for kitchen gardening. The urbanites are not doing that out of idealism or to make a political statement, but out of sheer necessity: as a result of poverty, it is one of the few ways to obtain food, or to generate their own income through the sale of produce from the land. For her series Couve e Coragem ('cool and courageous'), for two years Lioba Keuck followed the people who cultivate plots of land between busy arterial roads and apartment buildings. Many, originating mostly from the former Portuguese colonies, had once left their home in hope of a better life in the city. Now that this hope has vanished, and the social safety nets have fallen away due to the crisis, their vegetable garden is their only ally in the struggle for a dignified life.

A new generation of ambitious, well-educated entrepreneurs has arisen in Greece, hard hit by the Eurocrisis. Rather than throwing in the towel, they confidently begin businesses of their own, in what might be called the internet-mobile-software triangle. Francesco. Lastrucci recorded these fast-rising Athens start-ups at coLab, a brightly lit, intelligently designed building in the centre of the city where they they can rent a workplace with free broadband and coffee. From there these young Greeks can break into world markets, and in several cases have been able to even become market leaders.

For over a decade a civil war raged in Nepal. Maoist rebels wanted to depose King Gyanendra and establish a Communist state on the Chinese model. In 2006 the government and rebels signed a peace agreement, followed two years later by the election of an assembly to draw up a constitution. In his series This Country is Yours the photographer Surendra Lawoti followed activists from six different social and political movements in the capital city of Kathmandu – from religious minorities and indigenous peoples to women and the LGBT community – during the writing of Nepal's new constitution in a country that for centuries is being dominated by the ‘highter caste’ Hindus.

As a women who grew up in China, Yijun Liao always thought that she could only love someone who was older and moe adult than she was. Her Japanese friend Moro is however five years younger, which has reversed the rolls of power. This caused Liao to go in search of alternatives for what is considered the norm for heterosexual relations, and to photograph herself and her friend in diverse situations – which do not represent their real relationship, but are only an experiment, she adds.

The city-nation Singapore occupies an island with a coastline of 194 kilometers, making it somewhat smaller than the city of Hamburg. The photographer Weixiang Lim suggests that for Singaporeans, the coastline is a clear limitation. This natural barrier causes the population to look ambitiously beyond their borders, in search of something more that will calm their restlessness.

Two years ago the French former biker, vagrant and prisoner Brann de Senon decided to change his life. In the woods at Fontainebleau he purchased a plot of land and 20 old caravans. There he provides the homeless with food and shelter. There are a number of rules: no addiction, and everyone must do their share of the work, by feeding the animals, drawing water from nearby springs, or picking up donations from supermarkets in the area. Once a month they give out soup to homeless people in the cities and give them information. Beginning in August, 2013, Marcilhacy spent one week a month at this community. Even though the village will not itself change the lives of the tens of thousands of homeless in France, according to him it at least shows how what is necessary can be accomplished with limited means.

In 1984 the poison gas leak in Bhopal, India, claimed 8000 lives and injured countless more. Thirty years later there are still a hundred thousand people chronically ill from the effects of the gas cloud that escaped from the Union Carbide factory. The remaining poison keeps polluting the drinking water and has caused a sharp rise in the number of children with birth defects. The law suit against DOW Chemical (the company that bought Union Carbide) still drags on after thirty years. Abandoned by their own government, the population have no other choice than take things into their own hands. For instance, Rashida Bi and Champa Devi Shukla were widowed in the disaster. They established the Chingari Trust Rehabilitation Centre, which has seen to it that the local authorities regularly provide the most polluted neighbourhoods of the city with clean drinking water.

At the invitation of the photographer Wawi Navarroza the residents of Manilla sought out plants, stones, soil and other natural materials in characteristic spots in their city. She then used the collected (and comprehensively catalogued) material to assemble terrariums, thus creating a psycho-geographic map of Manilla on the basis of the hundreds of locations from which the material came. Under the glass domes the city, its memories, and the raw realities form tiny eco-systems that lead to large conclusions, reflections, and questions.

With No Dar Papaya the photographer Matthew O'Brien gives us his view of Colombia. In this series, which was shot with a Polaroid camera for its characteristic soft colours, he provides an antidote to the images of war, violence and misery that dominate the international media, and in Colombia are known as pornomiseria. Despite the violence and the deep chasm between the rich and poor, O'Brien saw how the Colombians lead their lives with considerable creativity, joy and feeling for humanity and beauty. No Dar Papaya is a expression meaning as much as ‘don’t show any weakness and don’t be an easy target’.

In A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World Robert Zhao Renhui documents the countless ways in which mankind is slowly but surely changing nature. Renhui presents a catalogue full of remarkable entities and life forms that have developed in often unexpected ways in order to cope with their environment after it was altered by people. Other organisms are the result of direct human interventions, with various motives that can range from scientific research to the desire for ornamentation.

What does it mean to be Ukrainian, or Russian? In the runup to the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict Sasha Rudensky visited both sides of the border in search of an answer to this question. The subjects of Rudensky's photos grew up after the disintegration of the Soviet Union – a period without a clear ideology. Do they define themselves at a personal and cultural level? How do they navigate in the social, political and psychological space between Western Europe and Putin's new Russian empire?

Jo Metson Scott did portraits of British and American soldiers who served in Iraq, but once there began to question the orders they received, and did not wish to continue fighting. On many occasions they did not return from leave. Their objections provoked various reactions. Sometimes they were praised, but more often ended up in the brig, or excluded, sometimes by their own families. In The Grey Line Scott investigates details from the lives of these soldiers, to uncover the essence of their dissident views.

The Nepalese village of Susta has always lain on the west bank of the Narayani River. This river was traditionally regarded as the boundary between Nepal and India, but all that changed when the river alternated its course, running ever-further into Nepalese territory – so far, in fact, that Susta now lies on the east bank of the Narayani. India, however, insists that the river is the border, and as a result, Susta and its vicinity is now a contested territory. The river's change of course is paired with serious floods and the erosion of hundreds of acres of farmland. If nothing is done quickly, people fear that the village itself will soon be washed away. The villagers' fate is now under pressure due to various external influences.

Science searches for knowledge, but the results can be unpredictable, suggests the German photographer Jens Sundheim. Depending on your point of view, you can call the results of research dubious, worrying, promising or clarifying. They can enrich understanding, cure diseases and make life easier, but also can help destroy mankind. In his series Von Ameisen und Sternkörpern Sundheim recorded this complexity at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, using his camera as a scientific instrument to discover the visual traces of scientific research.

The Ghanaian town of Elmina was founded in the 15th century by the Portuguese as the first European settlement in West Africa. While gold mining and the slave trade originally played an important role here, today fishing in the most important source of income. Without adopting the contemporary technology used in modern, industrial fishing, or the aggressive conduct of the Chinese fishing boats in particular, the fishermen of Elmina courageously fight for their existence. They have established small cooperatives that share out the income from their small-scale fishing among their members. In that way they can provide a living for themselves, without any form of governmental support.

Last year the photographer Marrigje de Maar made two long journeys on foot: along the 800-year- old, 1400 kilometer pilgrim's route on the Japanese island of Shikoku, and through the thousands of years of history in the Aboriginal regions in the Australian outback. She didn't feel alone for a moment on either of these solitary treks – in some peculiar manner she felt herself linked with the people who had followed these paths before her. In her thoughts they often walked a ways with her, while whispering their stories to her. With her two pinhole cameras – one with colour film, the other with black and white – she recorded these imaginary encounters.

How easy is it in our modern society to break out of the social network of family, work and school and withdraw from society? Either you must be strong and pragmatic, or an outcast or fool, says the Russian photographer Danila Tkachenko. The people in Tkachenko's series Escape have withdrawn into the vast wild, natural areas of Russia to be alone. They slowly lose their social identity and are swallowed up in their new environment. Tkachenko finds himself asking if it is possible for these people to liberate themselves from social dependence to get closer to themselves. 

In her constant search for the 'wonders of reality' Vero ended in New York City's borough of Brooklyn. There one finds the birthplace of the hipster phenomenon, an urban, superficial subculture oriented to consumption as a celebration the desire for individuality. Fashion is the strongest form of expression for the hipsters, and they use the street as their stage for seeing and being seen. With her street portraits in Brooklyn Hipsters Bielinski shows individuals who strive for uniqueness, but fail to realize that they wear a uniform.

In the late 1950s the Mod subculture arose in London. They distinguished themselves from the post-war society with their fashion consciousness, music and scooters. This subculture is still popular a half century later, in 2014. In her series Mod Couples Carlotta Cardana records Mod couples. But their characteristic style is no more than a framework: by not directing them, but rather letting them pose as they wish to, and even decide on the location themselves, Cardana looks beyond the 'mask' of their outward appearance. Through subtile differences in their poses and attitude the partners reveal a lot about themselves, both as individuals and as lovers.

A growing number of musicians in Beijing move outside the censored media channels. They provide a fresh, independent voice in a country that is known for its creative conformism and saccharine Cantonese pop. With their unique sound these musicians aggressively expose the dichotomy between the old socialist ideals and the temptations of the free market, and with it, the split in the moral and social basis of modern China. According to the photographer Matthew Niederhauser, who documented this underground scene, there is no doubt that these musicians will expand their awakening, and already spreading subculture of independent thinking and free musical expression.

In his series Cosplay the photographer Denis Rouvre shows us what most resembles a parallel universe. In Tokyo he photographed young people who devote their lives to cosplay, a contraction of the English words costume and play, dressing up as their favourite characters from manga strips, fantasy films or games. Contests, web forums and special events become their stage, and an opportunity to live the life of their fictional heroes and heroines. When in costume, Rouvre says, they reflect a part of their own personality, creating a life that is far removed from reality.

Time seems to have stood still in the Swedish village of Enviken. From the greased quiffs and petticoats to the American Old Timers and, of course, the music; everything here breathes a rockabilly atmosphere/rockabilly nostalgia. Originating in the early fifties in America, a worldwide rockabilly revival emerged in the late seventies. Rockabilly in Enviken seemed to be dying out with this latter generation, but now their children are following in their footsteps; forming the new Swedish old school rockabilly generation.

Last year the British photographer Fern Leigh Albert joined a self-sufficient community of 13 adults and eight children on a 13 hectare site in a woods. They have built their own dwellings, draw water from a spring, and generate their own electricity. In her photos Albert records her experiences and functions as an active member of the community. In addition, she likewise reflects on her own life as the ideal of a sustainable form of living, which has the smallest possible impact on the earth.

The isolated Älvdalen (literally translated as 'river valley') valley in Sweden can credit its mystic image primarily to the unique variant of Swedish that is spoken there, a dialect highly similar to the language spoken by the medieval Vikings. Among the 3000 people who still speak this language – among them the grandparents of the photographer Maja Daniels – there are only 45 youth. Therefore secondary school graduates receive bonus of 750 euro if they can speak Älvdalska. Daniels documented the lives of these young people, who cherish their language as a part of their unique identity and have taken on the responsibility for its survival.

Laura Hynd's grandfather built a simple vacation cabin in the Scottish hills at the spot where he first met his wife. Without electricity or running water, it is a place where you are thrown back on your own resources to survive. After her grandfather's death in 2010, the family spread his ashes around the cabin. Hynd reworks the unique ambiance of this spot and the passing away of the family patriarch into a new legacy, in which she combines her own photos of the cabin and its idyllic surroundings with stills from the film that her grandfather made in 1947 of his first meeting with his future wife. Stemming from her fascination for the wilderness, she created the work at a time when she wanted to flee society.

In the 1980s hundreds of farms in Delaware County, in the American state of Pennsylvania, were abandoned. In the past decade, however, under the influence of interest in small scale food production, the area has seen an influx of a new generation of farmers. They are implementing new ideas and sustainable methods for the production of organic foodstuffs, often operating on the border of economic survival. In her series One Farm, One Decade Dana Matthews follows the activity on Richard Giles's Lucky Dog Farm in the Catskills Mountains, where both of them live; Giles came there to farm and write, Matthews left Brooklyn in search for a place where she could create. Although he has been producing food for regional farmer's markets for a decade, his future looks anything but rosy: floods and droughts caused by climate change, and the constant threat of the shortage of sufficient clean drinking water, throw a spanner in the works for farmers like Giles.

In the early 20th century photographer Paul Thulin's great-grandfather settled on the coast of Maine, because it looked like his fatherland, Sweden. That was also the reason why his family would return there, to Gray's Point, in the extreme northeast of the United States, every summer for a century. The detailed stories of his great-grandfather and other family members, which arose and were told and retold there, form the essence of his family's identity, says Thulin. In his photos of this place he offers us a poetic vision of land, family, and time.

Members of what is called the Rainbow Family regularly come together from all over the world. The participants seek to live in harmony with nature. They reject violence, the consumer economy, and gather only in the most beautiful natural settings. Since her earliest youth the photographer Zia Zeff had gone to these Rainbow Gatherings, as they are called, with her parents. As a photographer who is also a professional dancer, painter and bodypaint and tattoo artist, she wanted to record her fellow Rainbow-family members in a more artistic manner than merely in a documentary portrait. She asked them to have their bodies painted as the animal or plant with which they felt the most affinity – their connection with the indigenous South American divinity Pachamama, literally ‘Mother Earth’. The result is a mix of painting, documentary photography and theater.

Following the economic crisis, the protest movement of Occupy Wall Street arose in New York in 2011 in opposition to the greed in the financial sector and the gap between rich and poor. The mass media characterised the protest as the work of extremists, punks, anarchists, and criminals with a vague set of demands. The Ukrainian photographer Sasha Bezzubov wanted to show that the demonstrators came from diverse walks of life to make clear how widespread the support for the protests was. As such, he illustrates the sheer depths of discontent with the financial sector and the extent to which the various economic problems affect a large majority of the population.

Born and raised in the Thai capital Bangkok, the photographer Withit Chanthamarit knows as well as anyone how political protests can paralyze that city at any minute. Although they are a familiar phenomenon, the motives of the demonstrators are sometimes difficult to comprehend. In his series Transplantation Chanthamarit records the activists while they are occupying parks, roads, bridges, government buildings, and even military bunkers. His is the street scene of tents, barricades and rubble that, according to Chanthamarit, could become an everyday occurrence as a result of the present political unrest.

Like other European countries, Italy finds itself confronted by an identity crisis, says photographer Stefano De Luigi. The welfare state, political institutions and industry are being faced with radical restructuring – a consequence of the economic crisis that has brought several countries to the edge of the precipice. Particularly for the Italian middle class, this restructuring is anything but painless. They see the prosperity that they were able to build in the 1990s slowly slipping away again. With Screamers De Luigi documents the protests in favour of a system that guaranteed more citizens stability and prosperity than ever before.

In his series Tunisi, 8.6.2013 the young Italian photographer Giorgio Di Noto investigates the way in which photos were made and circulated in the countries of the Arab Spring. Using the background lighting of the screens of mobile phones and smartphones, Di Noto projected the photos that their owners had made with them onto photo paper. He invited the phone's owners through social media to come to a provisional darkroom in Tunis for that purpose. In this way he recorded what pictures the participants had made, as permanent evidence of the important role of digital communication and distribution channels in the uprising in Tunisia.

In 2005, to get back to het Egyptian roots, English-born Laura El-Tantawy began a photographic exploration into the essence of Egyptian identity. Her series In the Shadow of the Pyramids must therefore not be seen as a story about Egypt, but rather as El-Tantawy’s vision of the country, underpinned by childhood memories and the struggle to understand herself and her place in the world. With the events of the Arab Spring, her focus widened to include the transition from Mubarak's dictatorship to the uncertain future ahead. The parts shown here, 'Tahir Square' and 'Faces of a Revolution', examine the events of the Arab Spring.

In February, 2014, Maidan Square, in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, was the scene of a bloody confrontation between opponents of president Yanukovych and his riot police. In March, after Yanukovych was deposed and had fled to Russia, Kirill Golovchenko photographed the square. The barricades that the demonstrators had thrown up on the square for their protection had now deteriorated into an almost unreal artefact of the revolution. According to Golovchenko, they are a symbol of the Ukrainian society. For the umpteenth time the country stands at the beginning of a new chapter in its history. If the political situation shows signs of improvement, they will be torn down; otherwise new barricades will be added to them.

When in January, 2014, the peaceful protests on Maidan Square in Kiev erupted into a violent and bloody confrontation due to the interventions of the police and army, the Ukrainian photographers Vladyslav Krasnoshchok and Sergiy Lebedynskyy couldn’t remain indifferent. They immediately travelled to Kiev and sought to literally stand their ground with their cameras in the midst of the violence and biting cold. They stayed on the square for two days, to record as much of what was happening there as they could. Despite having no helmets, gas masks or orange press vests, they survived the events without a scratch and left the city with all their photos.

The photographer Frederic Lezmi lives a couple of blocks from Taksim Square in Istanbul. He found himself on the front line when the peaceful protests against the reconstruction of Gezi Park, right next to Taksim Square, began, and were viciously suppressed by the police. For his poster book #Taksim Calling Lezmi combined spontaneously taken iPhone photos met idyllic picture post cards of Taksim Square. The book is designed in the form of a newspaper, with separate, oversized pages. While the post cards on the one side of the pages emphasize the importance of Taksim Square for the identity of the Turkish Republic, the images of the protests on the other side emphasize the kaleidoscopic character of the Turkish activists, without interpreting or evaluating the events.

Since Rio de Janeiro was named at the host city for the World Championship Football in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016, a remarkable scenario of political and social reform has been underway, reports Marcelo Enrique Londoño Alvarez. These sports events have been and are being used as an excuse for justifying the clearance of parts of the favelas, Rio’s poor neighbourhoods. Their residents are being driven out to the edges of the city, to improve security, while the violent actions of masked police in the favelas strike fear into Brazilians. That also applies to the conduct of the police outside the favelas: social protests by citizens receive considerable attention in Brazil and internationally, but the demonstrators are treated as hooligans.

In October, 2011, the international Occupy movement set up a semi-permanent camp near St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Ten days later the British media reported that thermographic photos showed that people were present overnight in only 25 of the 250 tents on the square in front of the cathedral. The photographer Ben Roberts did not trust this reporting, and recorded the tent camp. He photographed the communal and private accommodations for the five months they stood on the square. The evidence of activity and residence offered proof of the intensive use of the limited space by a large number of permanent and temporary residents.

Nepotisme, corruptie, achterkamertjespolitiek, sterke lobby’s van grote bedrijven en leiders die ten koste van alles aan de macht willen blijven – fotograaf Johann Rousselot vraagt zich af of de hedendaagse democratie wordt bedreigd. Tegelijkertijd stelt hij echter vast dat de wereld nog nooit zoveel burgeropstanden heeft gezien als de laatste jaren. Hij heeft bewondering voor de moed, energie en verbroedering die gepaard gaat met politieke protesten, ongeacht het succes dat de demonstranten ermee hebben. In deze roerige tijden voor de democratie zijn ze volgens Rousselot onmisbaar geworden. Zijn gelaagde collages, waarin portretten gecombineerd worden met gevonden beeldelementen op basis van de kenmerken van de betreffende beweging, zetten de actievoerders als militante iconen neer.

Since 2009, Greece has been confronted by the consequences of a heavy economical crisis. The successive reconstructive financial measures taken, following the aid loans from the European  Union safety net, the IMF, have destroyed social cohesion, have put the middle classes under enormous pressure, and have brought tremendous misery to society. The countless demonstrations in Athens against government cuts were characterised by the confrontations with riot police; with hundreds injured as a result. During these confrontations, Angelos Tzortzinis operated between the lines of demonstrators and those of the police. According to him, it can only be hoped that the current economical circumstances will indeed improve over the coming years, as the current Greek government claims, for the crisis has inflicted deep wounds in Greek society.

With the peace accord that brought an end to the civil war in 1991 and the surrender of the Khmer Rouge in 1998, Cambodia seemed to be leaving its past behind it. Thanks to a UN peace mission, democracy was established in the first half of the 1990s, although that proved to be largely in name only: premier Hun Sen has been in power since 1985, making him the longest-sitting head of government in the region. His long tenure can be credited to his autocratic, corrupt and often violent policies. The rapid economic growth, the corrupt legal system, and a fundamental change in the social structures have created an enormous gap between the rich and poor. Independent civil rights organizations, in most cases a result from unlawful land expropriation, resist the daily erosion of Cambodians' human rights.

People lead more sustainable lives once they have more of an understanding of the basic principles of the 'next economy', states Douglas Gayeton. With this in mind, he founded, together with his wife, The Lexicon of Sustainability to convey these principles through film and photography and to enthuse the public. In his series The New Face of Food and Farming in America, Gayeton uses photography to explain agricultural terms, and in doing so is able to show and research a popular development: the local production of food.

In 1958, at the age of eighteen, Larry Fink left his childhood home and moved to New York. Fink was immediately drawn to New York’s counterculture, and he soon met a group of artists, writers, and musicians affiliated with a late stage of the Beat Movement. The group “desperately needed a photographer to be with them, to give them gravity, to live within them, record and encode their wary but benighted existence”, Fink says.

Arriving in London in 1976, Karen Knorr and Olivier Richon met at college. Soon the duo indulged in their shared fascination with punk, one of the city’s burgeoning subcultures, and set out to capture portraits of the youth in rebellion that were on their way to defining a generation.