Like today’s selfie-takers, Walt Whitman used photography to curate his image – but ended up more lost than found

| Insights & Views

Though Walt Whitman insisted to friends that the moth was real and landed on his finger spontaneously it was a cardboard prop. Library of Congress When I read and study Walt Whitmans poetry, I often imagine what he...

Sebastião Salgado: a photographer of great humanity

| Insights & Views

The world has lost one of its most compassionate and visionary visual storytellers. Sebastião Salgado, the Brazilian-born photographer whose haunting black-and-white images shaped global consciousness for decades,...

The Salt Path taps into a long history of searching for healing on England’s south-west coast

| Insights & Views

Moth Winn was diagnosed with a terminal illness at the age of 53 and in the same week he and his wife, Raynor, lost their home. As the bailiffs arrived, the couple made a remarkable decision: to take a 630-mile year-long...

Waiting for Godot has been translated into Afrikaans: what took so long

| Insights & Views

At last, the most infamous latecomer in all of literature has arrived not in the flesh, but in South Africas Afrikaans language. Irish playwright Samuel Becketts best-known drama, Waiting for Godot, now also lives as Ons...

Choosing to be an orphan: for some Kenyan families it’s a strategy for survival

| Insights & Views

In the world of international child development and orphan care, its not uncommon for children with families to declare themselves orphans. In fact, this practice can be traced back to precolonial times in Kenya. Andreana...

Mbare Art Space: a colonial beer hall in Zimbabwe has become a vibrant arts centre

| Insights & Views

In southern Africa townships were built as segregated urban zones for black people. They were created under colonial and white minority rule policies that controlled movement, confined opportunity, and kept people apart. I...

The UK government is considering mandatory chemical castration for sex offenders – it’s an ethical and legal minefield

| Insights & Views

Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood is looking into a potential national rollout of chemical castration for sex offenders. This is a process of lowering testosterone levels with the intention of reducing libido. The proposal...