FirstLook: The Sari and the Balloon

On a winter’s afternoon in 2018 in Bogura, Bangladesh, I went out for a walk with my nephew. While walking, I saw a group of toddlers playing with colorful balloons and across from them boys playing cricket. I was struck to see a bright yellow sari hanging to dry in the sun, which really drew me into to the scene. I noticed that one of the toddlers had a yellow balloon in their hand and I thought about the composition. I positioned myself and waited there for about 10 minutes before the yellow balloon got away from the kids and landed in front of me. I clicked a photo on my cell phone just before one of them ran over to pick it up.

When on the street, I am always looking for light, color, and connection. This photograph reminds me of the stages of life, and here with beautiful light and color, I drew a line between the toddlers playing with balloons, the boys playing cricket and a woman’s sari. This is how life goes, in its own way.

—Fatima-Tuj-Johora
@fatimatujjohora
fatimatujjohora.com

The World's Fastest Scientist

Written by Andrew A. Sicree // Photographs by Nik Wheeler

Born in the Nile Delta, Ahmed Zewail became the first scientist to record molecules while they were undergoing chemical reactions that take place in a few millions of a billionth of a second. This established the field of femtochemistry and earned him the 1991 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In November 2009, he was appointed one of the first three US Science Envoys to the Middle East, and he passed away on August 2, 2016.

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Creatives

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Written by Graham Chandler
Photographs and video by Meridith Kohut

When a hand stencil-painting in the caves on this island recently dated to 39,900 years ago, Indonesia took a place alongside France and Spain as a site of the earliest known representational art. Now we must ask not only how and why we began making pictures, but how and why we did so on two continents, at the same time.

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Creatives

If I Forget You, Don’t Forget Me

Photographed and written by Manal AlDowayan

To reconstruct memories of her late father’s generation, the artist and author interviewed her father’s peers and made artifact-based portraits of his “unique generation that saw Saudi Arabia at its poorest and later at its richest,” a generation that understands “what it means to build your dreams from scratch.”

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