One of the things the astronauts always mention when they return
is how strong the Earth smells.
You can see her inhaling deeply.
It was just this really beautiful moment
where she held it up to her nose
and then the pure pleasure that it was giving her.
What it represents is this reconnection to Earth.
What does a human experience
when they return from off their own planet?
[DEVELOPING NEWS]
My name is Andrew McConnell.
I’m a photographer from the north of Ireland.
I grew up during the Troubles in north of Ireland,
and I think what I really took away from that time
was how others perceive you when you grow up in a conflict zone.
It's very clear that the outside world had one perception,
but when you live there, you realize life goes on,
and the majority of time can be quite normal.
What are the lives like for the people who live in these places?
It's much more interesting to me than someone holding a gun.
I first went to Afghanistan in 2018.
It was a very short trip.
But I returned after the fall of Kabul,
and the Taliban had taken over.
It's a very different situation now.
Those people who once were attacking,
you see on the streets everywhere.
They're the ones in control.
And so this here, you see four Taliban fighters,
and they’re eating pomegranates on top of the hill and just relaxing.
It’s quite a surreal sort of sight.
I mean, if you’d been there at any point in the past 20 years,
this is something you probably imagined you would never see.
So the big fear for everyone now
is women’s rights inside Afghanistan.
Immediately after the fall of Kabul, beauty parlors started to be defaced.
And I think it stoked up fears that this is going to be like 1994,
when the Taliban took over before
and really shut down any sort of women’s rights
and were extremely brutal in those days.
The question now is what will happen next?
There’s a lot of pressure from the international community
to become more moderate,
to allow women to live their lives in some sort of freedom,
so everyone is just watching for the next move.
What’s happened since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban
is that international sanctions now have been placed on the country,
and all of their assets have been frozen by the US
and consequently by other countries.
Afghanistan is close to economic collapse.
What we found is people pushed into extreme poverty.
And this is a really familiar scene in Kabul,
you’ll see outside bakeries women and children begging.
It really is just representative of what the country is facing now,
this severe hunger.
I mean, the UN has said that possibly 1 million children
could die of hunger this winter.
And the big fear, you know, if more isn't done,
if these sanctions aren’t lifted, if money doesn’t get to the people,
then worst-case scenario,
we're seeing another wave of refugees coming into Europe,
possibly next year.
This is Kazakhstan,
and it’s a series on space launches
and the landings of the Soyuz inside Kazakhstan.
A large part of the space race,
which is now in the news all the time,
billionaires who are now exploring space,
can be sourced back right to this place.
This is Launch Pad 1 in Baikonur.
This is where Yuri Gagarin launched from,
the first human ever to go into space.
This is a very obscure concrete structure
in the middle of this Central Asian plane.
And no matter where we go in the cosmos,
it'll always be traced back right to this place.
Here we see the Soyuz Descent Module, which has just landed,
and inside here will be three astronauts.
This is how they return from the space station.
So this capsule is attached to the International Space Station,
and they will climb into that
and then come down into the atmosphere,
the parachute will deploy.
It's a bit of a hard landing, but it works.
The real contrast that drew me back
was this sort of idea of the future and the past,
and here you see nomadic burial tombs.
So these are maybe 300 years old.
And so you have this incredible clash
of the future and the past in one image.
So this idea really struck me, it’s quite profound,
about where we’ve come from
and where we’re going to as a species.
This is obviously the steppe now in summertime, in full bloom.
And one of the things the astronauts always mention when they return is
how strong the Earth smells
because on the International Space Station,
there’s no real smells.
There was lots of flowers growing at this point.
You can see her inhaling deeply.
It was just this really beautiful moment
where she held it up to her nose
and then the pure pleasure that it was giving her.
What it represents is this reconnection to Earth.
What does a human experience
when they return from off their own planet?
I first went to Gaza in 2010.
I’d heard about this group of surfers who lived there.
I thought, “That’s incredible. I have to go and meet these guys.”
There’s maybe about 25 to 30 surfers.
It’s a very sort of young sport in the area.
Day-to-day life inside Gaza is pretty tough.
They’re essentially imprisoned inside this small strip of land,
they’re not allowed to leave,
and the economy is almost nonexistent.
Unemployment amongst the youth is, like, at 50 percent,
and their one release for the Gazans is the sea.
You have this stretch of Mediterranean coast.
It’s actually quite beautiful.
And surfing encapsulates so much of those ideas like freedom
and getting away from everything.
I love this picture.
It’s one of my favorite pictures
because it really encapsulates the energy that you find in Gaza.
It’s such a crowded place
because there’s so many people in a really confined area.
The water... to surf here is quite a challenge
because you’re trying to have to navigate many obstacles,
not just people but horses.
I love the fact that just this horse is here.
It’s, like, standing there alone.
The kids who own horses and use them to work,
they will bring them at the end of the day
to let them cool off.
I think it’s a beautiful scene
that sort of just captures the vibrancy of Gaza.
These are two of the only girls who surf in Gaza,
and they’re two cousins.
So they’re actually pretty far out on this day.
The girls are only about 12 at this point.
But eventually, you know, societal structures inside Gaza
will mean that they will have to stop surfing,
probably from the age of 14.
This is not really accepted
in what is a very conservative Muslim society, you know?
A lot of the project is surfers looking out to the horizon
because I found it quite powerful,
the look in their eyes
when they look out towards something that’s perhaps unattainable, which...
that horizon representing freedom,
something which they, you know...
cannot experience when you’re trapped in Gaza.
Photography has this incredible power
to bring us into other people’s lives.
My photography,
I always try to tell stories that perhaps were unexpected.
I think photography’s great power
is its ability to explore ideas that sort of can’t always be summed up.
And also to bring out in the viewer unexpected reactions.
It’s trying to get, perhaps,
a little clearer picture of who we are.