Marta Fast sits in the bedroom of a small house in Rot-Front, a village in Kyrgyzstan’s Chüy Region, on Oct. 10, 2022, while visiting her birthplace. Like most ethnic Germans in the village, she and her husband, Jakob Fast, immigrated to Germany in the late 1990s. Marta’s German father remained in Kyrgyzstan, fluent in Kyrgyz and deeply connected to the community, but encouraged his daughter to leave due to their experiences as a small ethnic minority facing discrimination. Marta knows her family’s story well. Her grandfather was taken by the Black Raven (Чёрный ворон), an NKVD prisoner-transport van used for nighttime arrests during Stalin’s Great Terror. In March 1938—her mother’s seventh birthday—he was arrested at his home in nearby Telman and executed that same day. The NKVD’s 1937–38 German Operation targeted ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union with mass arrests, executions, or Gulag deportations—like my grandfather’s fate. © Irina Unruh.
Buyers gather at the pigeon market in Rainawari, Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir, near Koh-i-Maran Hills, on April 20, 2025, looking for purebred pigeons. Every Sunday, the market becomes a place for keepers to share advice and bond over their love of pigeons. They carefully inspect each bird’s eyes, checking for a grey ring around the pupil, which can indicate the pigeon’s ability to fly high, fly long distances, or find its way home. © Aakash Gulzar.
Jeova de Jesus Pena Pantoja separates the berries from the açaí cluster accompanied by his brother-in-law and his daughters. The family depends almost entirely on harvesting açaí. They live in a land that does not belong to them but to a rancher woman who lets them live there in exchange for half the amount of açaí they collect. With the other half, Jeova de Jesus Pena Pantoja has to pay for all the maintenance of the açaí plantation, clean the land, and pay for his brother-in-law João Neto Talino Vieira, who helps him and works. What is finally left from the açaí harvesting is not enough to sustain the entire family so Jeova has to find other temporary jobs to complement his rent. 19 October 2023 Urinduba Community, Marajó, Pará, Brazil. © Pablo Albarenga / National Geographic.
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SQUARE MILE

Square Mile is an initiative in partnership with PhotoWings that presents diverse photographic explorations by members of VII Community, a worldwide network of The VII Foundation alumni and Foundry Photojournalism Workshop participants.   

EVENTS

July 4, 2026
FOTO Bali Festival
Nuanu Creative City, Bali

October 18, 2025

OKO Foto Festival
Lake Bohinj, Slovenia

September 20, 2025
JIPFest
Jakarta, Indonesia

July 10, 2025
Festival OFF Arles
Arles, France

June 13, 2025
Sarajevo Photography Festival
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

March 6 — 9, 2025
PhotoVogue Festival
Milan, Italy

August 23, 2024
Kranj Foto Festival
Kranj, Slovenia

July 2, 2024
The VII Foundation Arles
Arles, France

June 1 — 16, 2024
Photoville Festival
New York City, USA

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OKO FOTO FEST


JIPFest


OFF Festival


photovogue festival


Kranj foto festival


Les Rencontres d'Arles Photo Festival


Photoville festival