Photographer Gideon Mendel took portraits of more than 100 victims who lost their houses, businesses, and places of worship in last year’s LA fires. The powerful images place the subjects in front of the rubble that's left of their homes and livelihoods. Mendel has done similar photo projects with other climate catastrophes, but he said the response to this callout for subjects was overwhelming.

“I think a lot of people felt somehow being photographed by me would bring them some sort of closure,” he said. See his process. 

When the wall went up separating East and West Berlin, National Geographic correspondents Nathaniel T. Kenney and Volkmar Wentzel were there to document a city that became a place of, in their words, “unreality.” Their account and accompanying photographs are an intimate look at the bravery, fear, and ingenuity of life in a city divided.

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