Teenage Wasteland

A blog about photojournalism and world history.

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Palestinian youths practice their parkour skills in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

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Damascus

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Amer Almohibany for Agence France-Presse — Getty Images    

Damascus, SYRIA (Sept. 25, 2017)

Smoke billowed from buildings after a reported air strike in the eastern Ghouta area, near Damascus, Syria, on Monday. For the first time since the conflict began, a member of the Syrian military has been convicted of a war crime.         [Source] 

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Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

Maiduguri, NIGERIA (Sept. 21, 2017)

Portraits of girls kidnapped by Boko Haram militants, taken in Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria. The girls were strapped with explosives and ordered to blow themselves up in crowded areas, but managed to escape and find help instead of detonating the bombs. 29 August - 22 September 2017.

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Kos Karathanasis for National Geographic Your Shot

Guilin, CHINA (Nov. 6, 2017)

On an autumn evening in Guilin, China, two fishermen and their trained cormorants rest on their rafts. Cormorant fishing is a Chinese tradition that goes back more than 1,000 years. The fishermen tie small snares around the cormorants' necks. The bird leaves its post, catches a fish in its beak but can't swallow it, and then returns to the boat, where the fisherman retrieves the catch.

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Magnus Wennman for Aftonbladet

Horndal, SWEDEN (March 2, 2017)

Djeneta (right) has been bedridden and unresponsive for two and a half years, and her sister Ibadeta for more than six months, with uppgivenhetssyndrom (resignation syndrome), in Horndal, Sweden. It is a condition believed to exist only amongst refugees in Sweden. [Source]

Many of those afflicted with uppgivenhetssyndrom are not victims of the current crisis, but from former Soviet states. Many are from minority groups, such as Roma gypsies. Among those to suffer from the syndrome is a young boy called Georgi, was from North Ossetia, Russia. He told the New Yorker magazine that during his months in bed he had felt as if he were in a glass box with fragile walls, deep in the ocean. Moving or speaking would cause the glass to shatter and the "water would pour in and kill me,” he said. [Source]

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Aotaro for National Geographic Your Shot

Bangkok, THAILAND (April 27, 2017)

A night market, called Talad Nud Rod Fai, bustles in Bangkok, Thailand, behind the large Esplanade shopping center. Open only in the evening and into the night, the market offers food stands and discounted goods for crowds of tourists and locals alike.

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Antonio Gibotta for Agenzia Controluce

Ibi, SPAIN (Dec. 28, 2016)

Each year on 28 December, residents of Ibi in Spain stage a mock military coup, pelting each other with flour and eggs and letting off firecrackers. A group of men, ‘Els Enfarinats’ (The Floured Ones) take control of the town, pronouncing ridiculous laws and fining citizens who infringe them. Another group, ‘La Oposicio’ (The Opposition) tries to restore order. At the end of the day, the fines are donated to charity. Reputedly 200 years old, the festival was revived in 1981 after long lying dormant.

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Challenger, SPACE (Feb. 7, 1984)

On Feb. 7, 1984, during the Space Shuttle Challenger’s STS-41B mission, NASA Astronaut Bruce McCandless II makes the first, untethered, free flight spacewalk in the Manned Maneuvering Unit. After a series of test maneuvers inside and above Challenger's payload bay, McCandless went "free-flying" to a distance of 320 feet away from the Orbiter. This stunning orbital panorama view shows McCandless out there amongst the black and blue of Earth and space.

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Thái Dương Lê for National Geographic Your Shot

Mekong Delta, VIETNAM (2017)

In Vietnam's Mekong Delta, a woman harvests water lilies. The fertile region is home to a wealth of plants and animals, and its agricultural yield has earned the Delta the nickname of Vietnam's "rice bowl."  

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Yasuyoshi Chiba for AFP/Getty Images

Kisumu, KENYA (Oct. 29, 2017)

Worshippers of St Mary’s mission church pray during Sunday service.

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Rebecca Blackwell for AP

Mexico City, MEXICO (Nov. 2017)

A woman takes part in a Day of the Dead march calling for justice for victims of femicide, women murdered where the motive was directly related to their gender.

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Matthieu Paley for National Geographic

Xinjiang, CHINA (June 3, 2016)

A Uyghur woman carries money in her stocking, travelling along the old Silk Road by train, between Yarkand and Kashgar, in Xinjiang autonomous region, western China. Uyghur women, while Muslim, do not always adhere to a conservative dress code. The Xinjiang region is home to a diverse ethnic population, with about 46 percent being Uyghur.

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Jaime Rojo

Michoacán, MEXICO (March 12, 2016)

A carpet of monarch butterflies covers the forest floor of El Rosario Butterfly Sanctuary in Michoacán, Mexico, after a snowstorm. The severe storm hit the mountains of Central Mexico on 8 and 9 March, just as wintering colonies of the butterflies were starting their migration back to the USA—a journey of more than 4,500 kilometers.

The butterflies are surprisingly resilient and can survive several days in sub-zero temperatures as long as they remain dry, but it was unclear how badly the snowstorm affected the colonies. After a general decline in monarch populations, with numbers dipping by 90 percent since the 1990s, there had been a recent increase, and the winter had been seen as a possible turning point for the species.

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Noel Celis for Agence France-Presse

Manila, PHILIPPINES (July 21, 2016)

Prisoners sleep on a staircase inside the Quezon City Jail, at night in Manila, Philippines. The jail was built in 1953 to house 800 people, though the UN says it should accommodate no more than 278. In August, Time reported that there were some 3,800 inmates at Quezon.

Jail populations in the Philippines rose sharply after newly inaugurated President Rodrigo Duterte announced an all-out war on drugs.

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Activists holding placards supporting abortion take part in a pro-abortion demonstration in Santiago, on July 25, 2017. A plan to ease a ban on abortion in Chile has the backing of 70 percent of the country, a new poll released on Monday suggested, as a government push to do so navigated legislative problems. Martin BERNETTI / AFP

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Jonathan Bachman for Reuters.

Louisiana, USA (July 9, 2016)

Ieisha Evans (27) stands her ground at a rally against police violence against black men, outside the Baton Rouge Police Department in Louisiana, USA, on 9 July. Evans had travelled to Baton Rouge to protest the death of Alton Sterling, who was shot at close range while being held to the ground by two white police officers on 5 July. The fatal shooting of Sterling came at a time of heightened tension in the US over the deaths of black men at the hands of the police. Data collected by The Counted, an initiative set up by The Guardian to record such fatalities, found that in 2016, black males aged 15-34 were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by law enforcement officers. Evans was arrested at the protest, but released later that evening.

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