Tan’s haunting video portraits and collections of other people’s snapshots span countless continents and lifetimes
Photograph: Courtesy of the artist, Frith St Gallery and the Photographers’ Gallery, London
‘She was carrying a tape recorder so she could listen to Mexican music’. Graciela Iturbide’s best photograph
To browse all the photo in our Best shot series, visit the site.
The National Portrait Gallery’s solo exhibition of photographs by Neil Libbert celebrates his 55 years as an award-winning photojournalist for the Observer, the Guardian and many other publications. So often in the right place at the right time, Libbert has captured many of today’s biggest names at the start – and also at the height – of their careers. Here we tell some of the stories behind these compelling portraits.
Photograph: GEORGE BEST 20 October 1965. Neil Libbert/National Portrait Gallery, London
Each week we ask photographers to come clean on how they created their favourite works. This week Tom Archer: ‘I have no idea why she was pulling the curtains like that. It’s one of the hidden narratives of surbubia’.
Though he’s known for celebrity portraits, Beaton was one of the most prolific photographers of life during the second world war, taking over 7,000 pictures between 1940-45 in Britain as well as China and Africa. Featuring everything from blitz bomb damage to smoking soldiers, here’s a selection of Beaton’s rare war images.
Photo: William Mumler, Bronson Murray in a Trance with the Spirit of Ella Bonner, 1872.
Spirit photographers were prevalent in the 1800s when seances were popular and the greatest ghost stories of all time, such as Dickens’s The Signalman, were being written. They managed to get people to pay for images such as this obvious double exposure. Here are some more classic fake photos
Photograph: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Political, economic and social reforms are reshaping the country of Burma, and Getty photographer Ed Giles has been there to document them. After a nominally civilian government took power in March 2011, the changes it has instituted have spurred hopes of a new democratic era for the south-east Asian nation, as it begins slowly to open up to the international community.
‘I was overcome by the acrid smell’ … Nyaba Leon Ouedraogo’s best photograph. Photograph: Nyaba Ouedraogo/Declic-Agency.
As the Olympics kicks off, Tate Britain is hosting an exhibition of images by international photographers that capture London life between 1930 and 1980. Another London runs from 27 July to 16 September 2012.
This photograph was taken by Wolfgang Suschitzky near Monument Station, London, 1938.
‘I showed David Bailey my pictures of this place in the Black Forest. He said: You should put a girl in there’
Recommended stories and links from the Guardian's art and design team
Orée Design from France created a portable wireless keyboard made of wood, called: “Orée Board”. The keyboard...
