Publication

The big picture

It may look, especially at this time of year, as though they’re taking a break from an Easter parade. With their big orange shoes and plump yellow bodysuits, they could be taken for the kind of cute fluffy chicks that, in the paschal context, are...

The big picture

Rania Matar’s photograph of a Lebanese woman on the border with Israel is revealing due to what it keeps hidden The building in the foreground is in Kfarkila, in southern Lebanon. The land beyond it is northern Israel. The border wall then in...

The big picture

Seungho Kim’s triumphant picture of a ‘perfect’ fried egg is a marvel of ordinary, imperfect family life It could be viewed as a face-off between two elements vying for primacy in South Korean households. Since 1960 the country’s fertility rate has...

Reading between the lines

Melissa Denes explores the age-old question of Sean Penn’s face

The big picture

Two women erupt in glee in this image by an unknown photographer – but what exactly are they laughing at? Who are the two women in this image and what are they laughing at? If it was the work of a famous photographer – and it could be, with its...

Katherine Cowles on Cynthia Erivo’s Dracula

Kenan Malik on the origins of Maga Xavier Greenwood on becoming Jewish Rowan Moore on Jayden Ali’s radical London vision Katherine Cowles on Cynthia Erivo’s Dracula

Andrew Motion on John Berryman

The big picture

Kalpesh Lathigra can’t remember taking this photograph, though he knows it was early one morning last summer in Junagadh, in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The colour of the sari would have drawn his eye: that shade of blue appeals to him. But...

The big picture

If these structures shot in the Gobi desert by Zhang Kechun look truly cinematic, it’s because they are Encountered individually, these majestic structures rising out of the Gobi desert in northern China might inspire a sense of wonder and awed...

The big picture

It’s the mid-1960s, Beatlemania is at its height and four familiar faces peek out through the gap in a woman’s overcoat in this photograph by Joseph McKenzie, taken in the Gorbals area on the south side of Glasgow. She looks very fashionable in her...

The big picture

Nearly half a century has passed, and at least one of its subjects is dead, but this photograph by Nan Goldin feels as vital as the night it was taken – at a purple-hued bar in Boston, in 1978. Goldin later displayed it in New York clubs and galleries...