A Week in Pictures, Middle East and Africa, September 20, 2019

Afolabi Sotunde’s image of a traditional healer is far removed from preconceived notions of what such a scene would look like, but the light and colour in the frame are quite astounding. Once you read the caption you quickly look past the beauty of the light and colour and descend into the story. Read on here

Agbetuyi Samuel, a traditional header with his friend, also a healer, prepare a traditional medicine that contains the head of a pangolin in his house in Akure, Nigeria, August 28, 2019.   REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde

A sliver of catchlight highlights the profile of lips and nose of a riot police officer in this well-observed picture by Philimon Bulawayo. The face, although quite stern, still warms and softens the cool hard edges of the blue helmets and the grey uniforms. Cover the highlight with your finger and look again at the image: the feeling of menace trebles.  

Riot police stand before striking healthcare workers protesting over the disappearance of Peter Magombeyi, the leader of their union outside a hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe, September 18, 2019.   REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

A complex combination of the symmetrical shapes of the doors and windows, with people moving in and out, gives the viewer a slightly uncomfortable feeling in Alphonso Toweh’s picture. You struggle to see what is going on in the distance as you peer through the entrances at the bright light and colours of the clothing. Only once out are drawn back into the blackened building do you notice the man looking at the scene where so many children died.       

A man looks into the burned building after a fire swept through a school killing children in Monrovia, Liberia September 18, 2019.    REUTERS/Alphonso Toweh

The pressure is on when you know you are on the top global story, the attack on the Aramco oil field. Hamad Mohammed keep his cool told the story visually when on the face of it all you have to photograph is shapeless lumps of metal, the story was rocket fragments being displayed to the media by the Saudi military. A clever use of a silhouette of a camera being held in profile leads you to the unmistakable shape of fins of a rocket in the background. Of course, you need to the see the objects too and you can do so here. 

Remains of the missiles which the Saudi government says were used to attack an Aramco oil facility are displayed during a news conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, September 18, 2019.   REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammad.

After Xenophobic attacks in both Nigeria and South Africa, people have fled home. Temilade Adelaja has captured exhausted children flopping all over mum and dad as they are carried through the airport. You can almost feel of the weight of these sleeping children. But what I love most about this picture is the tiny detail of the passport being held bottom left.   

Nigerians, who were evacuated from South Africa after xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals, arrive at the airport in Lagos, Nigeria, September 18, 2019.    REUTERS/Temilade Adelaja

No doubt Corinna Kern could not believe her luck as Benny Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White party, lifted his had to gesture into blue and white light. The contrast between the warm tones on his face and the cold light on his hand is set against a perfectly black background. Maybe it was not luck, and Corinna spotted the light and just had to wait for the perfect shape to capture the right moment. 

Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz speaks at the party’s headquarters following the announcement of the exit polls during Israel’s parliamentary election in Tel Aviv, Israel September 18, 2019.   REUTERS/Corinna Kern

A perfect moment of light and shape captured by Zoubeir Souissi is wonderfully pleasing to the eye, but why? I think it’s the tip of the finger’s shadow just a fraction away from the face. A moment before or after and the visual tension between the shapes would be lost. The temptation would be to crop to just the shadows and the hand, but then you would lose the right and downward pressure of the figure on the left that counters the upwards and left flow of the shadows.

Election workers count votes as the country awaits the official results of the presidential election in Tunis, Tunisia September 17, 2019.   REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi

A wonderful daily life picture by Mohammed Salem draws you in layer by layer using focus, compositional structure and a little tilt to offset and break up the vertical and horizontal lines of the walls and buildings. Each time you look you find more and more. The boy in the green shorts on the left, not so distracting as he is not in focus; the girl in the foreground looks through the gap in the fence to lead us to the perfectly timed skipping girl in midair. Finally, you notice the boy in the background on the left looking across at the play. And this is all set in the warm tones of rusting metal.

A Palestinian girl plays with a skipping rope outside her family house at Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City September 16, 2019.   REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Thousands have marched globally in support of action on climate change, but it’s the simplicity of Afolabi Sotunde’s picture that caught my eye. The baking sun with an optical ring and a protest banner being lifted up towards it, the image grey and bleached of all colour, giving it a sense of foreboding. You can see the rest of the pictures here.  

A protester raises a placard during a demonstration for climate protection in Abuja, Nigeria, September 20, 2019.   REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde

A week in Pictures, Middle East and Africa, October 15, 2017

It appears to the rest of the world that Kenya is struggling as the two main political parties wrestle for power in the lead-up to a second election after the first was declared void. Baz Ratner’s pictures of a plus size fashion show was a visual antidote to the daily diet of bloody street clashes. There is sheer joy on the faces of the women as they walk the catwalk in the latest Kenya fashions. I love how the light of the show changes from a cool blue on the right to hot reds on the left and you can almost hear the booming music.

Models pose on the catwalk during a plus size fashion show in Nairobi, Kenya October 7, 2017.   REUTERS/Baz Ratner

If ever a picture needed the health and safety warning “don’t try this at home”, it must surely be Mohamed Abd El Ghany’s picture of Egyptian fans celebrating their team qualifying for the 2018 Word Cup Finals. You can image the conversation moments before ‘I’ve got an idea, let’s all spray flammable gases into the air in a crowd and set fire to it’. A bad idea resulting in a great picture. 

Egyptians celebrate their soccer team’s victory against Congo that qualifies Egypt for the 2018 World Cup, in Cairo, Egypt October 7, 2017.    REUTERS/ Mohamed Abd El Ghany

Libya-based photographer Hani Amara’s picture of migrants sent a chill down my spine. At first, all we see is dozens of people sitting in perfect rows in a fenced-off area. Then we notice that more people are joining their ranks on the right, peeling off in strict order. What we can’t see is how many more will join, but I get the sense that this line of human tragedy is endless.  

Migrants sit at a detention centre in Gharyan, Libya, October 12, 2017.

Even though Abdullah Dhiaa Al-deen’s picture was taken last August it was only published this week and so it qualifies to be included in pictures of the week (I set the rules anyway and they are there to be bent.) Abdullah worked on this in-depth story for weeks, and from the whole series I like this image the most. To me the calm and beauty of the scene seems as timeless as the turban is long. The delicate material held by the men draws you slowly into the picture towards the graceful arches, the eye pausing to take in the complexity of the floor’s design. The whole picture story, published on the Wider Image that can be seen here. 

A Shi’ite cleric holds a turban at al-sayed al-Yazdo school run by al-Hawza al-Ilmiyya in Najaf, Iraq August 12, 2017. For more than 1000 years the al-Hawza al-Ilmiyya in southern Baghdad has been giving religious instructions to thousands of Shi’ite Muslims to help them become clerics.   REUTERS/ Abdullah Dhiaa Al-deen

Most of the time I believe that a picture has a natural crop, which might be captured by the camera in the purist Cartier Bresson sense or might need to be cropped by an editor with an eye to bringing out the best. On rare occasions some pictures just need to be seen in two different ways. Baz Ratner’s image is one of these. You immediately ask yourself ‘what is going on here?’ Cropped wide you see a man in a car consumed by white gas, the colour of which matches the paintwork. The car, the man’s face and arms and the eerie shadow on the side all add to the bizarre nature of the image. But then you want to see the man’s face, with his eyes seeming to pop out of his head as he tries to escape the smoke, his hands flailing about. You choose which you prefer.  You can read the back story to Baz’s picture here.

An opposition politician of the National Super Alliance (NASA) coalition, reacts after a gas canister fired by police hits his car during a protest along a street in Nairobi, Kenya October 13, 2017.  REUTERS/Baz Ratner

Often the strongest pictures are made when objects are seen out of their usual context; a boat balanced on a building after a storm, a Rolls Royce in a swimming pool (it’s only Rock and Roll) and in this case Ange Aboa’s picture of a plane in the sea. What makes this picture even stronger is that the rescue is still going on. The man on the right of the picture desperately seems to call the viewer into the image to help with the rescue. The waves batter the stricken plane and crash in left to right, hampering the rescue. The wind so strong you can almost taste the salt water mixed with the spilled fuel of the plane.

People pull the wreckage of a propeller-engine cargo plane after it crashed into the sea near the international airport in Abidjan, Ivory Coast October 14, 2017.    REUTERS/Ange Aboa

Photographing a deadly bomb attack in Mogadishu is never easy. The constant danger of a secondary device targeting rescue workers and the fear that there may be a follow-up gunman attack means that you always have to be super careful. You also have to be mindful that you don’t produce pictures of such horror and gore that they are just un-publishable. Feisal Omar not only portrays the devastation of the scene -- fire, smoke, burning vehicles, wreckage and men carrying weapons -- but he also captures the human element of rescue and survival as the armed men carry the injured to safety. A very powerful news image.

Somali Armed Forces evacuate their injured colleague from the scene of an explosion in KM4 Street in the Hodan district of Mogadishu, Somalia, October 14, 2017.   REUTERS/Feisal Omar

The simple oval composition to Thierry Gouegnon’s picture, aided by a pointing hand, draws you into the writing in the sand.  Immediately you are intrigued; what is going on and what is causing such intense scrutiny? A game of chance? A plan for some event? Nope, the Liberia election results as they are announced on the radio. A fantastic picture that to me sums up the struggles and hopes of one of the world’s poorest nations as they go to the polls. 

Supporters of George Weah, former soccer player and presidential candidate of Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), note on the ground presidential election results announced on the radio, in Monrovia, Liberia October 15, 2017.    REUTERS/Thierry Gouegnon

Week in Pictures, Middle East and Africa, October 8, 2017

Balanced on a pile of cushions, a gunman aims his rifle through a hole in a wall. Half shut your eyes and Erik de Castro’s image looks like a landscape, a watery sun setting to the left of a mountain, the moon just beginning to appear on the right. Open them again and you see the gunman precariously balanced as he prepares to kill. 

A fighter of Syrian Democratic Forces takes up a position inside a house in Raqqa, Syria, October 1, 2017.    REUTERS/Erik de Castro

We often read reports of troops massing prior to a battle but rarely do we get to see a great picture to match them. Armoured vehicles with brightly coloured flags fluttering in bright sunshine give the initial feel of a vintage car rally, a feeling that quickly dissipates as the compositional line between the smoke and the sky, mirrored by the line of telegraph poles on the left, race us to the vanishing point on the horizon where smoke rises from the battle.     

Shi’ite Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and Iraqi army members gather on the outskirts of Hawija Iraq, October 4, 2017.

The clash of El Nabout canes, traditional clothing, strong shadows and an inconvenient lamp post combine to make a picture that intrigues. Mohamed Abd El Gheny’s affectionate picture of men taking part in an ancient martial art that is now a dance form provided one of the visual surprises of the week. The slight tilt to the image and the shadows leading to the lamp post enables its warm brown colour and harsh line to contribute to the shape of the picture instead of destroying it.

Abdu El Kholy and Hamdey El Hamed dance with their El Nabout canes as they perform Tahteeb, an ancient form of martial arts and dance, in the evening light in Sohag, Egypt, September 19, 2017.   REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany

A picture’s beauty can be doubled when someone is smiling. When that person is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I think the effect is fourfold. Mike Hutchings captures Tutu celebrating his birthday in one of the warmest and most affectionate pictures I have seen in weeks. The laugher is infectious, as the figure behind Tutu seems to have a wide grin too.   

Archbishop Demond Tutu laughs as crowds gather to celebrate his birthday by unveiling  an arch built in his honour outside St Georges's Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa, October 7, 2017.   REUTERS/Mike Hutchings

A slightly bizarre image by Erik de Castro who is covering the fighting in Raqqa, Syria, caught my eye. Why anyone would carefully lay out the uniform of an ISIS fighter on a stairwell is slightly beyond me, especially when a single boot is added to the bottom step? It’s almost as if a political comment is being made, the body and air has been squeezed out of ISIS as the SDF advance on their last strong holds in Raqqa. More pictures here.

A uniform of a member of Islamic State militants is pictures as it was displayed by the Syrian Democratic Forces at their positions inside a building at the frontline in Raqqa, Syria, October 6, 2017.   REUTERS/Erik de Castro

When it ‘rains on your parade’ the day is often spoiled, but quite the opposite happened here for Thierry Gouegnon, who turned a downpour at a campaign rally to his advantage. First, keeping dry, Thierry has used his shelter and those people close to him to frame his picture of women dancing in the torrential rain. What I also like is that I am unsure if it’s taken at night with strong stage lights illuminating the scene, or the light has been created by the sun bursting through the storm clouds. 

Supporters of Joseph Nyuma Boakai, Liberia Vice President and the candidate of Unity Party’s (UP), attend their party’s presidential campaign rally in Monrovia, Liberia, October 7, 2017.    REUTERS/Thierry Gouegnon

How could I resist highlighting this sweeping landscape, where the zigzag of hundreds of marching people seem to morph into the distant mountain ranges and then beyond to the  clouds. Photographer Ronen Zvulun makes an epic action picture that I am sure Western film director John Ford would have admired.

Palestinian and Israeli women march, as part of an event organised by ‘Women Wage Peace’ group calling for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, near the Jordan River, in the occupied West Bank October 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun