Indonesian photojournalist Nyimas Laula visited Rote Island in East Nusa Tenggara, at the southernmost point of the country. One evening she sat watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean: ‘I met Aurel, who shared a tender moment with her dog as she bathed in the water. I usually gravitate towards newsworthy images, created in a fast-paced environment. This photograph inspires me to rethink how I work, to slow down and to look into quiet moments’

Alexa Smith (centre) relaxes with her friends Samantha (left) and Escarle (right), in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Photojournalist Danielle Villasana says transgender women are heavily marginalised and discriminated against across Latin America. In Central America they are further threatened by endemic violence from gangs, clients, police and family members. ‘By following women long-term, I strive to paint a more truthful, humanistic portrait of this community that is often narrowly portrayed by the media’

More than 20 women share this cell built for four in a detention centre in La Yaguara, Venezuela. Ana Maria Arévalo Gosen, a Venezuelan visual storyteller, took the image as part of her Días Eternos (Eternal Days) project about the living conditions of incarcerated women in Latin America. ‘They spend their time writing letters, drawing, reading the Bible, sharing cigarettes or ironing their hair. To survive, they depend on members of their families for food and water. They share everything: mattresses, clothes, the intimacy of their love stories, the tears shed for their children’

‘I was intrigued by how ballet, often associated with privilege, was being used as a form of self-expression in Kibera, one of the largest informal settlements in Nairobi,’ says Ugandan-born Kenya-based documentary and portrait photographer Sarah Waiswa. ‘I wanted to offer an alternative to the stereotype of the poor African child from the slum’

The Flying Cholitas are a group of female wrestlers in Bolivia. Here, Elizabeth La Roba Corazones and Alicia De Las Flores fight at a ring on the outskirts of El Alto. Brazilian photographer Luisa Dörr says: ‘At first, I was fascinated by the skill of these Indigenous women, but then I saw it went beyond the ring. They are fighting for their rights, for recognition, for equality. To put a meal on the table for their kids. They’re fighting for their lives’

Nineteen-year-old ‘A’ at a shelter for 90 female abuse survivors. The image is part of Indian photojournalist Smita Sharma’s We Cry In Silence project, investigating cross-border sex trafficking between India and Bangladesh. Sharma explains: ‘She had eloped with a man several years prior. After she overheard him making plans to sell her to a brothel in Kolkata, she managed to escape. She was found at the railway station in Canning, West Bengal, by representatives of Childline. She was brought to this shelter where she received counselling. A few months later, A was reunited with her family’

Fashion designer and single mother Nassiba with her son, Bilal, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, photographed in 2016 after a divorce. She told Saudi-American photographer Tasneem Alsultan: ‘Society constrains the definition of a divorcee. What you can or cannot do remains under the control of others. I have made peace with the sacrifices, but also managed to find happiness on my own.’ Alsultan updates Nassiba’s story. ‘She is in her second and happy marriage, and a mother of two sons, I am happy to have been able to document this transition in her life’

Filipina street photographer Xyza Cruz Bacani captures her family together at their home in the Philippines. She says: ‘My father, Villamor, hugs my mother, Georgia, as she spends time with my nieces and sister, Sharila. My mother has been a domestic worker in Hong Kong for more than two decades and only comes home once a year for two weeks. Those two weeks are the happiest I have seen our family.’ This image is part of We Are Like Air, a body of work focusing on the nuances of migration

Nada Harib’s portrait of her cousin, Mira, in Yefren, Libya, wearing their grandmother’s tlaba (wool garment). Harib says: ‘After the revolution, Libyans, including myself, began to recognise the value of our culture and traditions, and are trying their best to revive them. In 2018, I started my ongoing project Women of Libya to explore my Amazigh roots and revive the cultural heritage of my hometown in the Nefussa mountains’

In May 2021, an explosion outside a high school in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed at least 70 people and wounded more than 150, many of them teenage girls leaving class. Visual storyteller Kiana Hayeri took this photograph in the basement of an unfinished mosque where neighbours and relatives of two of the victims have gathered to support their mothers through their grief

Lebanese-born US photographer Rania Matar took this image of Farah in Aabey, Lebanon, in 2020, for her series SHE. Matar says: ‘In this series I focus on young women in their 20s, the ages of my daughters. Farah was part of the young generation who had been protesting in Lebanon during the popular uprising of October 2019 to get rid of the corrupt government. There were factions trying to undermine the protests and they burned her car. We collaborated to portray the moment, immortalising the car before it went to the dump. It was an act of resistance and it was important to tell her story’

A girl ties a Palestinian keffiyeh for Attiya Dawood during a demonstration by pro-Palestinian and other civil society groups outside the US consulate general in Johannesburg, South Africa. The image was taken by South African photographer Gulshan Khan on 15 May 2018, when the demonstrators protested the killing of 59 Palestinians the previous day in clashes in Gaza, which coincided with the US formally moving its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in defiance of international outrage

US wildlife photographer Ami Vitale took this image of Ye Ye, a 16-year-old panda, inside her enclosure at the Wolong nature reserve in Sichuan province, China, on 30 October 2015. YeYe’s two-year old cub will soon be released into the wild

Protestors call for the resignation of governor Ricardo Rosselló in San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2019, after leaked messages between government officials, including Rosselló, mocked victims of Hurricane María, which hit in September 2017. Gabriella N Báez says: ‘Many of the protestors highlighted government corruption and misuse of emergency funds. Others, like myself, had a personal reason to be there: Jorge G. Báez, my father, died by suicide in the aftermath of Hurricane María. Documenting this historic moment felt like my way of contributing to the struggle for justice on the island’

Aya (left) and Ashley at a rally outside Arizona’s state capitol building, in Phoenix on 6 January 2021 to protest against Joe Biden’s victory in the US election. Adriana Zehbrauskas says: ‘Arizona’s votes were instrumental to Biden’s win … and there was a lot of tension in the air. I had grown accustomed to seeing protesters carrying large weapons, but it was the first time I had seen young women doing so.’ There was something about them ‘that drew my attention’. ‘Was it their defiant and fashionable pose as they held their guns? I am not sure, but I knew nothing would be the same’