₦airaland Forum

Photos are not taken, they are made, and only the best of photographers will understand this. Anyone can take a photo, but to catch a photo at the right time to express the right emotion comes down to talent. These photographers have made their photos bring out a bundle of emotion; they have managed to express the brutality this world has managed to lash out on each other. They have captured such moments that one would think, what have we done or are still doing to each other?? Man has been the worst predator, stooped down to the dignity of animals to kill in the face of justice and greed. What these award winning photographers have shown us will certainly prove that.

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Cool kwa

The Kayan women of Northern Thailand are known for the exquisite and incredible brass coils they wear around their necks. They are often called the "long necks" or the "giraffe women" by outsiders and can wear up to 25 coils, which many never take off.


Myth has it that the women will break their necks or be unable to support them if the coils are removed but this is simply not true. Maeneng, above, is the matriarch of her village, and while she is the only one to wear 25 coils, she often helps adjust and repair the coils of other women.


Children are often given their first set of coils at age 5. This consists of a set weighing about 4 1/2 pounds, then new rings are slowly added. In actuality, the Kayan women do not have their necks elongated; instead, it works in the other direction. As the weight of the coils press down, the clavicle is lowered, and with each addition to the neck rings it falls further, compressing the rib cage as well. The shoulders finally fall away to give the appearance of an elongated neck.

And lastly here on my list

The lip plate, also known as a lip plug or lip disc, is a form of body modification. Increasingly larger discs (usually circular, made from clay or wood) are inserted into a pierced hole in either the upper or lower lip, or both, thereby stretching it. Archaeological evidence indicates that labrets have been independently invented no fewer than six times, in Sudan and Ethiopia (8700 BC), Mesoamerica (1500 BC), and Coastal Ecuador (500 BC). Today, the custom is maintained by a few groups in Africa and Amazonia.
In Africa, a lower lip plate is usually combined with the excision of the two lower front teeth, and sometimes all four. Among the Sara people and Lobi a plate is also inserted into the upper lip. Other tribes, such as the Makonde, used to wear a plate in the upper lip only. In many older sources it is reported that the plate's size is a sign of social or economical importance in some tribes. However, because of natural mechanical attributes of human skin, it seems that the plate's size often just depends on the stage of stretching the lip and the wishes of the wearer.

Though scarification is done by people all over the world, it is practiced heavily by Sepik River tribes in Papua, New Guinea as part of an initiation ceremony for men. This is only a small part of a ceremony that lasts for weeks and includes public humiliation, but it's ridiculously painful. The elders of the tribe use razor blades to cut the young men all over their bodies in a pattern that closely imitates the rough skin of an alligator. They believe that the alligator will then consume any semblance of a boy left in their bodies, and they will become men.

Human tooth sharpening is the practice of manually sharpening the teeth, usually the front incisors. Historically, many cultures have practiced this form of body modification. In Bali, teeth were filed down because it was thought that the teeth represented anger, jealousy, and other similarly negative emotions. The teeth were also sharpened as a rite of passage for adolescents. Teeth filing was also used by Aborigines for spiritual reasons, similar to assorted Vietnamese and Sudanese tribes. In Mayan culture, the teeth were sharpened, and sometimes had designs carved into them, to distinguish those in the upper-classes. Many cultures would sharpen their teeth to imitate animals, such as the Wapare of inter-tropical Africa, who sharpened their teeth to imitate sharks, as well as kicking out some mandibular teeth during puberty.

For some people, this would be totally extreme, but for local Thais, this is completely normal. They ignore the pain because this ritual is a rite of passage to adulthood. This is an annual ritual performed in public to announce to the whole world that they have become adults.


The vegetarian festival in Phuket sees a great deal of devotional activities in the Chinese communities. Trance and heavy piercing are part of the tradition. This festival is held on the Southern Thai island of Phuket every year in October. Most impressive are the processions that are held almost every morning during the ten days of the festival. The processions feature devotees of the different city shrines which act as "mediums" for the Chinese Gods. Some of the mediums put sharp objects (mostly metal objects) through their cheeks as an act of devotion for themselves and for the whole community. Other rituals that are performed include walking barefoot over hot coals and ascending ladders with bladed rungs.


All the mediums act involuntarily while in a trance, which allows them to endure the long piercing sessions. Although the wounds are said to be healed completely after the service, scars accumulate on their faces year after year.

Most Dinka boys and girls don't cry when the local sorcerer takes a red-hot knife to their dark faces. If they wince or cry or react to the pain they will lose face in the community, so it's best to sit through the process in peace. Facial scarification is practiced throughout Sudan, and various marks across the faces of tribesmen give identity to the tribe and beauty to its women.



Men of the Dinka tribe in South Sudan scar their faces with three parallel lines across the forehead in a rugged display of courage to the tribe. Dinka boys receive their scars around adolescence to mark the transition to manhood, when they take the responsibilities of the other men in the nomadic tribe.

The Apatani tribe lives in the Ziro valley in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in India's northeast. Apanti women were considered the most beautiful among the Arunachal tribes; so beautiful, in fact, that they had to make themselves look unattractive as protection from invaders from other tribes. Hence, Apanti women wore large wooden plugs in their noses, a tradition not carried forward by the younger members of the 26,000 people-strong tribe today.

It is impossible to say who the first people were with stretched ears, or why they did it. Today, many cultures (including our own!) practice the art of ear stretching for many different reasons. Religion, coming of age ceremonies, warding off evil, sexual enhancement and physical beauty are common motivations. However, that just barely scratches the surface as there are many other reasons, as well. People all over the world still practice ear stretching. From the Masai tribes in Kenya to the Huaorani tribe in the Amazon Basin, stretched ears are still a common sight. It is a fascinating testament of human culture that a Western youth can walk into a piercing shop to select stretched ear jewelry while a Hmong youth in Thailand selects from an array of silver tubes.

12. Facing the Death: the different expressions of six Polish civilians moments before death by firing squad, 1939


It’s interesting to see the range of emotions displayed by these men. Anguish, defiance, stoicism, acceptance and fear, the third one from the left is even smiling. This execution happened during the Bloody Sunday in Bydgoszcz (Bromberg), Poland, 1939. Bloody Sunday was a series of killings of members of the German minority that took place at the beginning of World War II.

11. Hans-Georg Henke – 16 Year Old German soldier crying

10. The priest and the dying soldier, 1962


Navy chaplain Luis Padillo gives last rites to a soldier wounded by sniper fire during a revolt in Venezuela. Braving the streets amid sniper fire, to offer last rites to the dying, the priest encountered a wounded soldier, who pulled himself up by clinging to the priest’s cassock, as bullets chewed up the concrete around them.

9. Job hunting in 1930’s

8. Defiant until the very end, a German Communist being executed in Munich, 1919

7. The face of war: The first press pictures of dead U.S. soldiers that was presented to the public, 1943


At a time when censors used a heavy hand to keep the American public from knowing and seeing the carnage in the Pacific during World War II, this ground-breaking photograph of dead American soldiers confronted the American public for the first time with the real face of the war.

6. A Japanese boy standing at attention after having brought his dead younger brother to a cremation pyre, 1945


Joe O’Donnell, the man who took this photo at Nagasaki, was sent by the U.S. military to document the damage inflicted on the Japanese homeland caused by air raids of fire bombs and atomic bombs. Over the next seven months starting September 1945, he traveled across Western Japan chronicling the devastation, revealing the plight of the bomb victims including the dead.

5. German soldier returns home only to find his family no longer there, 1946


The photo of a German prisoner of war returning to his home town of Frankfurt to discover his house bombed and his family no longer there, shows the kind the depressing moments of dejected subjects we associate with images of war.

4. Georges Blind, a member of the French resistance, smiling at a German firing squad, 1944


In the end, this turned out to be a mock execution intended to make him talk. Also it was staged for intimidation of other resistance fighters. He was forwarded to a concentration camp, where he was selected for termination on arrival, dying some time in late November 1944.

3. German soldiers react to footage of concentration camps, 1945

A picture from an Einsatzgruppen soldier’s personal album, labelled on the back as “Last Jew of Vinnitsa”. It shows a member of Einsatzgruppe D just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1941. All 28,000 Jews from Vinnitsa and its surrounding areas were massacred at the time.

2. The last Jew in Vinnitsa, 1941

1. Russian spy laughing through his execution in Finland, 1942

They say a picture is worth a thousand words… and these rare historical photos are no exception.

The energetic kids have already mapped out their future goals as they await their test results.

The children who are currently residing in the government hospital appear to be cheerful, energetic and full of beans like the boys of their age. Shoaib Ahmed, the 13-year-old plans on becoming a teacher while his brother Abdul Rashid wants to be an Islamic Scholar.

“My sons get energy from the sun,” says the boys’ father but doctors disagree.


Mohammed Hashim, the father of the two brothers hails from a village near Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province. He married his first cousin and had six children in total. Two of the six children died at an early age and the other two children exhibit normal behavior.
While Mohammed Hashim thinks that Sun provides nourishing energy to his two sons, the doctors have repudiated this claim. They point out that the children manage well during the day, even when kept in a dark room or during rain storms (when clouds hide the sun).

The case has stirred interest among the medical fraternity in Pakistan. The doctors are conducting various tests to find the causative agent/factor that’s causing the mysterious paralysis in the children. Blood samples have been taken from the boys and some of the samples have been sent overseas for further investigation.
Researchers have also collected air and soil samples to determine whether the boys contracted the strange symptoms from these elements.

The two boys aged nine and thirteen are normal, healthy and active boys by day. But once the sun begins to descend, so does their energy. By dusk, the boys slip into a vegetative state where they are unable to move or even speak.


Javed Akram, a professor of medicine at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences confessed that he had no idea about the mysterious illness plaguing the young kids.


The cost for the blood tests and treatment is borne by the government.

The world is full of strange mysteries that baffle and challenge the perception of mankind. New theories, experiences, factors shatter the previously held notions, prove that there still are many things in this world that elude the knowledge of mankind. Here is a curious case of siblings of Pakistan referred as ‘Solar Kids’, who have confounded the medical practitioners with their unique ability – A case of normal kids who turn into vegetative state as soon as the sun goes down!

‘Solar Kids’ refers to two siblings from Pakistan whose medical condition has confounded the medical community.