This beautiful collection of work by Sarah Stacke examines how new initiatives by the Obijiwe preserve their traditions in balance with a renewed wider interest in sustainable and indigenous approaches to food. Stacke highlights the importance of community in connection to food using portraits mixed with reportage. The effect gives the viewer insight into the process without losing sight of the people, or preaching on virtues.
—Kate Bubacz, deputy photo director, BuzzFeed News
With the holiday season upon us, the notion of "family" carries added weight. In this profile by the New York Times, writer Rena Silverman discusses (Un)expected Families, a new exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the role that photographers have played throughout history in documenting family life. Perhaps most poignant here is the realization that the person who most wants to capture their family in photos is usually behind the camera, entirely absent from view.
—Gabriel H. Sanchez, photo essay editor, BuzzFeed News
In a masterful blend of narrative and visual storytelling, Morgan Ashcom's photobook What the Living Carry tells the story of a fictional town called Hoy's Fork and the residents who call it home. The project began when the NYC-based photographer found himself routinely traveling back to his rural hometown and was forced to grapple with the two realities he was straddling. Inspired by Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, the work is named after a particularly poignant quote from the book, "Death is what the living carry with them."
—Laura Geiser, photo editor, BuzzFeed News
While the focus of this essay centers around the lives of teenagers growing up California, the pictures themselves could very well have been taken anywhere in the United States. Here, Magnum photographer Alessandra Sanguinetti perfectly captures the freedom of youth in all of its eccentric and embarrassing glory. The awkwardness, the boredom, the lust, and the companionship are all played out in this series as if nothing else in the world matters. Such simpler times.
—G.H.S.
The second paragraph sums it up neatly: Different reasons motivate these journeys, but the experiences are often the same. The International Red Cross has done an exceptional job presenting these stories in the most beautiful and poignant way possible. By showing us personal accounts, the story takes us right to the heart of those experiencing it, and reminds us that when talking about big issues like migration, it’s not merely stats that we’re dealing with, but people.
—Anna Mendoza, photo editor, BuzzFeed Australia
This new photo essay by Lisa Krantz is gut-wrenching. Following the medical saga of Rowan, the images allow the joy of this little boy to outshine the sadness around him. Honestly, brace yourself for tears.
—K.B.
Humans have, throughout our history, worshipped inanimate objects or treated them as actual living beings. I caught myself thinking how unusual this story is when in reality, it’s no different from the faith I grew up with telling me that a piece of unleavened bread is actually the body of Christ. Amanda Mustard’s photos take you through the same journey of understanding that she went through; at face value things seem weird but as you read more, you realize that at their core, her subjects' beliefs are just like those of any institutionalized religion.
—A.M.
Adam Ferguson’s images of Manus are claustrophobic — you get a glimpse of the infuriating helplessness of being stranded on an island in legal limbo, trapped far from family and increasingly, far from hope. The images are appropriately stark, dark, and heartbreaking.
—K.B.
Lovers of color-field studies will find James Porschen's photographs reminiscent of the paintings of Mark Rothko, Kenneth Noland, and Morris Louis — and also delightfully contemporary. His aerial photographs of the vibrant effects of halobacteria interacting with high salt concentration are purposefully divorced from references to time, place, and scale and specifically framed to isolate and induce appreciation for the beauty of nature's own paint palette.
—L.G.
Here are the most moving and breathtaking pictures from the past week.