For a little more than two decades, Bavarian photographer Markus Brunetti has scoured Europe for its most impressive basilicas, monasteries, duomi, and other striking ecclesiastical landmarks. Working closely with collaborator Betty Schöner, with whom he travels around the continent in a firetruck that has been converted to a photo lab, the pair snap thousands of images of each structure in meter-by-meter detail, often over the course of several years.

Through a meticulous editing process that includes layering and arranging each shot into composite images, Brunetti creates precise, high-resolution views of the facades that we never experience in real life. Perspective is skewed so that the ornate temples and cathedrals’ entrances are perfectly straight. Rather than the oblique view we usually get—think of how tall structures look when viewed from the street, with their base appearing wider and the top growing gradually narrower—we’re confronted with a striking one-point perspective.

Brunetti’s current solo exhibition, Facades IV at Yossi Milo, highlights a selection of the artist’s recent portraits, several of which were completed in the last couple of years. “Roma, Basilica di San Pietro,” for example, was initiated in 2007. “Brunetti and Schöner returned to St. Peter’s Basilica seven times over nineteen years,” the gallery says. “With each survey, they grew closer to realizing this grand image—a particular challenge given that it is one of the largest and most visited churches in the world.”

Printed at an impressively large scale—up to seven-and-a-half feet tall—the photos venerate these buildings, many of which are centuries old. “The result exceeds the possibilities of any single photograph, even at the highest possible resolution, creating works that stand as monuments in and of themselves,” the gallery says.

Facades IV continues through June 20 in New York City.

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In ballpoint pen on found fragments of philosophical and historical texts, Habib Hajallie delves into the emotional realm of memory, connection, and loss. The Kent-based artist often celebrates Black cultural figures and beloved family members, along with examining his own personal experiences as a British man of Sierra Leonean and Lebanese heritage. In his current solo exhibition, Black & Blue at Larkin Durey, Hajallie grapples with the devastating stillbirth of his daughter and the “indescribable emotions that sit beneath language,” says the gallery.

For this show, the artist deliberately switched from using black ballpoint ink to blue. As he made these works, Hajallie also reflected on the loss of his sister four years ago. Using antique maps and snippets of philosophical and sociological writings, he portrays subtle sides of what the gallery describes as “an altered sense of self.” Figures, including several self-portraits, exude feelings of despair, confusion, numbness, care, and the nuanced emotions that emerge in-between.

“While this series is concerned with the internal landscape of loss and what it means to endure a profoundly altered reality, each artwork has acted as an invaluable step towards healing,” the gallery says. “By drawing directly onto antique texts that explore morality, purpose, and transcendence, Hajallie’s personal pain enters into a wider conversation about finding meaning and the ways in which drawing can become a space of solace and catharsis.”

Black & Blue continues through May 22 in London. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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Known for his stunning photos of wildlife and landscapes, as well as co-founding SeaLegacy alongside fellow conservationist and photographer Cristina Mittermeier, Paul Nicklen has traveled the globe to not only highlight our planet’s phenomenal biodiversity but also to shed light on its increasing vulnerabilities due to the ongoing climate crisis.

Nicklen’s most ambitious project yet gathers myriad images from a career exploring the corners of the earth for more than three decades. Forthcoming from Hemeria, Reverence marks the most comprehensive collection of his work to date. The book features 160 photographs, including some of Nicklen’s most enduring images alongside others previously unpublished.

From the root-like system of the Colorado River delta to narwhals feeding on cod in the Arctic Bay off Baffin Island, Nicklen’s photos illuminate the vast and resilient beauty of the natural world. “Reverence is what we feel in the silent presence of a whale beneath the ice, in the fierce gaze of a polar bear, in the timeless dance of ocean and light,” says a statement. “It is what the natural world evokes when we stop long enough to truly see it.”

Reverence is slated for release on July 28, which is also World Conservation Day, and pre-orders are open now.

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Organized by Capture the Atlas, the 2026 Milky Way Photographer of the Year saw a record number of submissions, with more than 6,500 entries representing a wide range of landscapes and perspectives around the world. Just 25 were selected as the top images, representing 12 different regions from the Canary Islands to New Zealand to Argentina.

“Every year, this collection reminds us that photographing the Milky Way is not only about technique or planning. It is about curiosity, patience, and the desire to experience the night sky in places where it still feels wild,” says Dan Zafra, editor of Capture the Atlas and curator of the annual contest. “Many of these skies are becoming increasingly rare, and we hope these images inspire people not only to admire them, but also to value and protect them.”

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“The world hums with beauty and danger, harmony and discord,” says Jake Messing. “We walk through these shifting currents every day. For as long as I can remember, I have turned toward the natural world—studying its patterns, its relationships, its quiet lessons.”

In highly detailed, hyperrealistic paintings, the Northern California-based artist explores nature as a reflection of our inner lives. Abundance and beauty are sometimes confronted with tension and discomfort, and through nature, “I question the fears and unspoken rules that shape us,” Messing says.

Working in acrylic on canvas, the artist composes otherworldly vignettes of flora and fauna, often uniting creatures and plants in situations we’d be unlikely to encounter in the real world. Yet these dense, maximal clusters of succulents, insects, blossoms, birds, and other creatures summon what Messing describes as both “chaos and grace” in a vibrant meditation on ecosystems, interdependency, and biodiversity.

In an art historical sense, these works certainly nod to the meticulously detailed Dutch Golden Age oil paintings of the likes of Rachel Ruysch and Jan Brueghel the Elder, which were also typically set against deep backgrounds. Employing a bit of memento mori—a reminder of the inevitability of death—these often incorporated wilting petals and other nods to decay.

Messing taps into this tradition, yet he emphasizes full-blooded vivacity. Every floret and frond is bursting with life, while the occasional playful color gradient, bubbles, or shiny fabric place these compositions firmly in our time. “Through my work, I seek to bring the outside in, to honor the wildness that surrounds us, and to reveal the beauty and danger, the decay and renewal, that bind our outer and inner worlds together,” he says.

See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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For the better part of two decades, Irina Werning has traveled throughout Latin America searching for a specific trait: incredibly long hair. In her photography series Las Pelilargas—meaning “the long-haired ones” in Spanish—she chronicles a time-honored Indigenous tradition through a visual celebration of patience, joy, and cultural pride.

In a statement, Werning shares that when she asks young women in the many small towns she’s visited why they have long hair, they respond with simple reasons akin to, “Because I like it.” But, Werning adds, “The true reason is invisible and passes from generation to generation. It’s the culture of Latin America, where our ancestors believed that cutting hair was cutting life, that hair is the physical manifestation of our thoughts and our souls and our connection to the land.”

Nearly 90 images are included in Werning’s new book, Las Pelilargas, published by GOST Books. The photos span 18 years, starting with the artist’s first encounter with long-haired women in 2006 in Argentina, when she was photographing members of the Indigenous Kolla community.

“Guided by her intuition, she went on to spend months in remote mountain towns putting up signs in schools, hospitals, and markets, and organising hair competitions in an effort to seek out those with long hair,” GOST says. Werning continued to make the portraits until 2024. “She found that traditions were not just surviving, but evolving with long hair symbolising both continuity and subtle rebellion.”

Find your copy on Bookshop. You might also enjoy Celia D. Luna’s series, Cholitas Bravas.

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When it comes to photo dumps, NASA has upped the ante. The organization has added thousands of snapshots from the Artemis II mission to the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth archive. The album now holds 12,217 images by cosmic travelers Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen during their more than 250,000-mile, 10-day flyby mission around the moon.

According to PetaPixel, a couple of Nikons and an iPhone 17 were the cameras of choice for the journey. And even though many of the thousands of recently uploaded images are very similar—some are even quite blurry—scrolling through them gives the impression of being seated right next to the “Moonfarers” as they marvel at Earth and its satellite and simply can’t put the camera down—just like we tend to snap way too many photos of a beautiful sunset.

Some of the most impactful photos include the reflections of the astronauts’ hands and faces in the window of their vehicle, the Orion module. Juxtaposed with meticulously engineered equipment, the earth and moon seem somehow less abstracted from this unique vantage point, in which these orbs appear somehow more resonant and precious—and vulnerable.

Explore more of our favorites below, and learn about the Artemis II mission on NASA’s site.

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Humor and happenstance take the front seat in Polish photographer Janusz Jurek’s wry images. Working as a graphic designer and commercial photographer by day, he finds the greatest creative freedom in the candid and incidental—the things he notices as he moves about town, travels, and attends festivals and other events. These are the places where he observes some of the most unique individuals and the quirkiest coincidences. “The less commercial and more bizarre, the better—people are more authentic then, less in control of what they’re doing,” he tells Colossal.

Jurek is drawn to situations that happen outside of the mainstream, often turning his back on whatever the present attraction is in order to observe what’s happening all around him. He focuses on “the people, their reactions, small gestures, and strange coincidences. This is where moments that are truly surprising often appear,” he says.

As Jurek has learned over time, some of the best images happen right at home. The crux of the process is all about noticing what’s going on, not where it happens. And beauty is never the objective. “I don’t care about the photos being pretty,” he says. “Quite the opposite—for me, street photography is the antithesis of all the technical perfection and imperfection that’s everywhere on the internet these days.” Instead, he’s fascinated by the ability to raise questions and provoke reactions in the viewer, from curiosity to amusement to slight discomfort.

Jurek is working toward the release of a collection of photos titled Look, Before It’s Gone, chronicling his street photography over a period of five years. See more on Behance, and follow updates on Instagram. You might also enjoy the work of Eric Kogan and perusing top images in the Pure Street Photography Awards.

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When Adrienna Matzeg embarked on a trip to Kyoto, Tokyo, and Seoul in July 2025, she encountered intense midsummer heat and humidity, which led her to exploring some of the cities’ nooks and crannies in the dark, when it was cooler.

Illuminated storefronts and signage characterize the artist’s late-night runs to convenience stores, markets, and other features of these hubs’ sprawling urban fabric. “In her textile embroidery work, however, the energy of the city falls away,” says a statement from Abbozzo Gallery, which presents her forthcoming solo exhibition, After Hours. “What remains are quiet scenes that left an imprint, tactile snapshots as a record of those summer nights.”

After Hours represents an evolution of Matzeg’s travel-related works, centered around embroidered vignettes of snacks and roadside attractions that have a snapshot-like, diaristic quality. Brightly lit facades and bold displays seem to float on the surface of black linen, with the addition of a small plate of hanami dango—the distinctive pink, white, and green rice dumpling snack on a stick—drawing us close to the artist’s experience.

After Hours runs from May 8 to 30 in Toronto. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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In the late 12th century, a nobleman named Count Gerard van Loon commissioned an abbey to serve as his final resting place. Over the next few decades, amid plenty of political tumult, Herkenrode Abbey in Hasselt, Belgium, was converted to the first Cistercian convent for women. It was a site of pilgrimage from the 13th to the 15th centuries, and despite regional wars and economic uncertainty, it stayed the course. During the 16th century, it experienced its heyday thanks to the patronage of a figure named Prince Bishop Evrard van der Marck, seeing the addition of a Gothic church that brimmed with beautiful stained glass windows, textiles, paintings, and more.

The Eighty Years’ War paused Herkenrode’s prosperity, and once things stabilized again politically, the abbey experienced several decades of good fortune, although much of this wealth was spent on the abbesses’ own acquisitions of property and art in a show of their prestige. But the paradigm-shifting Liège Revolution, which coincided with the French Revolution, brought all of this crashing to a halt by 1796. The abbey complex was promptly sold and dismantled.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Heckenrode went through many other uses, including factories and even a series of private homes, before it was again acquired by a religious organization in the 1970s. While the original 16th-century abbey church no longer exists due to a devastating fire in 1826, the site remains one of the region’s most culturally significant. And Herita has been working to restore it. As part of a phased regeneration of the landmark and its park, an ethereal, life-size sculpture of the abbey titled CLAUSURA by Gijs Van Vaerenbergh has risen from the building’s original footprint.

The studio, founded by Belgian designers Pieterjan Gijs and Arnout Van Vaerenbergh, conceived of CLAUSURA as “an artistic vision for the vanished heart of Herkenrode.” True to scale, the structure is made of slender steel rods that rise from the ground in an airy framework. The installation revolves around the idea of memory and sensation: rather than rebuilding the abbey to try to mirror what it may have looked like hundreds of years ago, the work nods to its past with an airy elegance.

“The new volumes are transparent, allowing their silhouettes to blend seamlessly with the landscape in the background,” says a statement. “The intervention balances between reconstruction and abstraction, as the original structures are evoked through a refined play of suggestion. Iconic details such as windows, vaults, and towers enhance the sense of recognisability, although at times, these elements dissolve back into a chaos of lines.”

Gijs Van Vaerenbergh is known for its architectural interventions, often utilizing steel, stone, wood, and a wide range of other building materials to re-envision spaces as structural sculptures. “What unites their diverse output is a sustained focus on how space is experienced—visually, bodily and temporally,” a statement says.

CLAUSURA is being constructed in three phases. The first, which is also the most ambitious, is slated to open to the public on June 18. Visitors will be able to walk and reflect amid the installation. See more on Gijs Van Vaerenbergh’s Instagram, and learn about the restoration progress and how to visit on Herita’s website.

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During the Victorian era, innovators made huge leaps with optical technologies. It was the period of the stereoscope and an early projector known as the magic lantern, not to mention that eyeglasses became more affordable and entered the mainstream. These advances also influenced scientific inquiry, making microscopes more powerful, and the pursuit of microscopy enabled researchers and enthusiasts to discover creatures invisible to the naked eye.

One of these enthusiasts was London-based educator and amateur scientist Charles Thomas Hudson. Along with other scholars and aficionados, he participated in interest groups. “As President of the Royal Microscopical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society, Hudson was a leading figure in this growing scientific community,” says a statement from Osh Gallery, which is currently exhibiting a collection of unique illustrations in The Hudson Transparencies.

Curated by Luke Powell and Jody Hudson-Powell of design firm Pentagram, which runs Osh Gallery, the exhibition literally brings to light a number of colorful transparencies that Hudson used during his lectures. While they appear dark and even unfinished in a typical setting, “when lit from behind these intricate works transform into magical visions of life previously only glimpsed when viewed under a microscope,” the gallery says.

The Hudson Transparencies includes 58 original transparencies that measure a surprisingly large 37.8 by 29.5 inches. Each of the graphics’ proportions are “the equivalent of drawing ants the size of elephants,” says a statement. The animals and botanicals emerge through a combination of painted paper and perforations, which are made with lines and clusters of pinholes.

Hudson was particularly fascinated by rotifers, a phylum of zooplankton named for their so-called “wheel-bearing” characteristics. He also catalogued algae, protozoa, and larvae—such as that of the mayfly with its feather-like tail. Microscopic marine organisms were a particular favorite, though, and these back-lit images highlight the convergence of science and spectacular visuals that not only brought these creatures to life in a unique way for 19th-century viewers but continue to awe us today.

The Hudson Transparencies continues through June 11 in London. You might also enjoy Martin Kunz’s turn-of-the-century tactile graphics and Lorenz Oken’s seminal natural history work, Allgemaine Naturgeschichte Für Alle Stände.

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Earlier this month, dozens of metallic discs suspended from the ceiling of a large industrial space invited viewers to immerse themselves in what SpY describes as “a continuous choreography of movement and reflection.” The artist is known for his large-scale installations, often repurposing objects like traffic cones and metallic rescue blankets to create striking urban interventions.

SpY’s most recent room-scale work, titled “Halos,” reimagined the industrial interior of a former railway-related factory in Florence—a place we typically associate with Renaissance elegance as opposed to brutalist design—as part of the city’s Bright Festival.

Three stories high, “Halos” interacts with the natural breeze that flows throughout the space, which is exacerbated by people moving around. Glimmering light further lends a sense of ethereality and even magic.

See more on Instagram.

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