For the first time in more than 50 years, NASA launched a mission to the Moon. A lot has changed since 1972, when we last checked in on the enormous, rocky satellite, but there is much to learn—and revisit—when it comes to traveling through deep space and considering what, as NASA describes it, a “long-term return” to our lunar companion could look like. The Artemis II mission, which is currently underway and scheduled to last a total of 10 days, has also released some remarkable images of our home planet.

A striking image of the Earth “setting” behind the cratered Moon takes a truly unique view of our planet and prompts us to consider our perspective. It’s reminiscent of one of the most iconic photographs of all time, known as “Earthrise,” which was snapped by astronaut William Anders during the 1968 Apollo 8 mission—the first crewed trip to the Moon.

Artemis II is scheduled to return to Earth on the evening of April 10, when the crew will splash down into the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.

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When we think of Los Angeles, we often picture seemingly endless sunny skies, postmodern downtown skyscrapers, Hollywood, and beachy enclaves like Venice. But there’s also a mysterious, lurking side of Los Angeles popularized by legendary gangsters like Mickey Cohen and the hardboiled novels of Raymond Chandler, published between the 1930s and 1950s.

For Emmy award-winning director and photographer Daniel Sackheim, this gritty, shadowy underbelly lends itself to a series of bold black-and-white photos that highlight the noir valence of this iconic hub. His forthcoming book, The City Unseen, leans into L.A.’s dualities, focusing on historic buildings, trains, and individuals walking through urban spaces.

Often silhouetted in patches of sunlight, Sackheim’s dramatically cinematic effects of deep shadows and crisp highlights suggest a kind of timelessness. Even the daytime shots feel eerily as if they could be shot during a full moon or amid uncanny artificial light. In a city that is both contemporary and steeped in history, “Sackheim’s journey through these urban spaces is a testament to the paradox of the night, where stillness and trepidation walk hand in hand,” says a statement.

Sackheim is curating an exhibition alongside photographer Julia Dean for Ren Gallery, which is slated to open in May. The City Unseen is scheduled for release on May 12. Find your copy from Hat & Beard Press, and see more of Sackheim’s work on Instagram.

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Through atmospheric, black-and-white photographs, Yamamoto Masao explores the emotional connections between image and memory. His intimate, otherworldly gelatin silver prints evoke dreamlike archival footage that has been somehow unyoked from the normal rhythms of time. His subjects vary, although he often focuses on landscapes and natural subjects, including a number of owls that roost in trees near his home in Japan.

Ten Owls at Yancey Richardson marks the artist’s seventh solo exhibition with the gallery, showcasing intimate portraits of the nocturnal birds. No larger than 10 inches on the longest side, these images are intended to be viewed up close in a way that brings these elusive creatures much nearer to us than we ever experience in the wild.

Often peering directly at the camera, their alert, sage, sometimes wary or candid looks evoke a sense of emotional connection. Each avian is an expressive protagonist, with the deep blacks and soft edges of Yamamoto’s prints inviting reflection and empathy.

Over time, the impact of development in the countryside where Yamamoto lives has drawn his attention to these winged, woodland denizens. “Owls have always been a familiar presence to me,” Yamamoto says. “However, as the number of people living in the forest grew, those with no interest in the laws of nature began clearing the trees. Sadly, the owls’ perches are vanishing. Even so, when I hear their faint hooting echoing from somewhere in the distance, I feel a sense of peace.”

Ten Owls opens on April 16 and continues through May 22 in New York. See more on Masao’s Instagram.

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Known for his collaborative photography projects like Invisible Jumpers, Joseph Ford is interested in perception and intervention. His ongoing series, Impossible Street Art, invites artists such as Antonyo Marest, Alex Senna, and MadC to imagine their work in monumental landscapes via a bit of sleight of hand. The artists create trompe-l’œil interventions on Ford’s photographs, which he then documents on an easel in front of that same place to give a sense of what these huge paintings or installations would feel like in situ.

“These new works mostly explore infrastructure in the form of huge concrete constructions—nuclear power plants, dams, fossil fuel power stations,” Ford says. The locations are often connected to the industries and network of energy production, such as hydropower systems, or logistical configurations related to highways and ports.

For example, the nuclear power station “painted” by Skirl is situated in a sprawling nature preserve on England’s east coast, adjacent to the Suffolk & Essex Coast & Heaths National Landscape, and a new plant is currently under construction despite much local opposition.

“These locations are physically in the public domain and dominate their surroundings through their huge scale, but often have restricted access. They are imposed on us—it is impossible not to see them—but it is impossible to engage with them, use them, or sometimes even approach them.” By superimposing street art on otherwise inaccessible sites, Ford and the participating artists address these looming constructions and the nature of energy production as “a way of reclaiming and engaging with them,” he says.

See Ford’s work this month at The Other Art Fair in Chicago, which runs from April 9 to 12. Find more on Instagram.

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Blown wildly out of proportion in large format, the slime molds that British photographer Barry Webb captures seem atmospheric and sculptural. Stemonitis, for example, looks like dozens of thin pieces of wire with their ends coated in colored wax. But this fungi-like form is one of hundreds of kinds of slime mold, and it typically only reaches a height of about two centimeters at the most. Thanks to Webb’s macro photos, we glimpse a phenomenally beautiful world up-close that is otherwise virtually invisible.

Scientists have documented hundreds of these organisms, which aren’t actually related to plants, fungi, animals, or molds—despite the name. They comprise a unique group unto themselves, more closely related to amoebas. And new discoveries are being made all the time. From mottled gray bulbs that look like snow-covered trees to pink, coral-like tendrils, Webb chronicles a huge array of colors and shapes. He also consistently submits images to local and national botanical records so that researchers have access to high-resolution imagery.

Webb’s image of a species called Lamproderma scintillans, partly engulfed by a water droplet, won the Botanical Britain category of the British Wildlife Photography Awards. Several of his photos are on display in large format in the exhibition Mythos Wald at Gasometer Oberhausen in Germany, which continues through the end of the year. And in the U.K., see Webb’s awarded images in the 2026 International Garden Photographer of the Year exhibition at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Find more on his Instagram.

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When photographer Frank Relle was nine years old, he remembers sneaking out of the house he grew up in in New Orleans just before daybreak to catch the sunrise—an event he found frustratingly difficult to explain to others, as much as he wished to share the experience. It was only years later that he discovered the camera, and he reflects on this time now through the lens of an excerpt from the essay “Between Yes and No” by Albert Camus: “A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”

Relle adds, “The swamp was that opening for me. I do not fully understand how. I went in once, and something happened; I changed, and then I kept going back.” The New Orleans-based photographer still returns to the swamps of Louisiana, watched over by bald cypress trees draped in ethereal swathes of Spanish moss. He canoes onto the calm waters, capturing the transition between day and night amid the sounds of birds and other creatures that make their homes there.

“I work in the swamp because it returns me to a way of being that feels older, quieter, and more true,” Relle tells Colossal, continuing:

Out there, surrounded by trees, insects, birds, reflections, and dark water, I stop living inside the noise of my own mind. The swamp pulls me out of the island of myself and places me back inside a larger living world. In that state, I feel wonder, connection, and a kind of freedom. Photography became my way of sharing that feeling—not by explaining it but by inviting others into it.

Relle’s series Until the Water explores Louisiana’s otherworldly bayous through a lens of serene reverence. He places lights beneath boughs and trunks, illuminating trees against darkening horizons to emphasize their billowing shapes amid expansive wetlands distinctive to the Gulf Coast region of North America.

Time is both evident and seemingly suspended in Relle’s photos, as within the context of a single day ending or beginning, we observe mature cypresses that may have weathered hundreds of years. (The oldest known living tree in eastern North America is a bald cypress in North Carolina that’s more than 2,600 years old.) Some of the trees are abundantly leafy and full, while others are bare, struggling, or cracked open.

“The swamp at two in the morning is not quiet; it is one of the loudest places I have ever been,” Relle says. “But a photograph of it is silent. And in that silence, there is an opening. A threshold….That is what I wanted when I was small, watching the sky change. Not to describe it. To bring someone else to the edge of it. To share it without words.”

Find more on Relle’s Instagram, and purchase prints in his online shop. And if you’re in New Orleans, visit his brick-and-mortar gallery on Royal Street.

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Baldernock is a small parish located in the hills just north of Scotland’s largest city. It’s only seven miles between the village and Glasgow city center, but its atmospheric moorland and rolling fields, dotted with sheep, feel a world away. For photographer Camille Lemoine, who currently lives in Glasgow and grew up in Bladernock, the familiar rhythms of small town life, agriculture, and the country’s legendarily mercurial weather lend themselves to a series called Down Tower Road.

Intimate images capture steel gray clouds, gnarled trees, elegant grasses, and clusters of purple heather. Lemoine also emphasizes the presence of the female body, whether communing with the earth in a narrow track through a field or looking into the hollow of a tree as if physically merging with it.

This literal closeness to nature and the particularities of the landscape create what the artist describes as “the feeling of being moved into a different kind of aliveness.” Lemoine explores both bodily and emotional connections to the land, highlighting curiosity and care in a study of what it means to really know a place.

“Through practicing the act of noticing, these images are devoted to the intricacies of the landscape, often bringing attention to the individuality of each thing, such as the blue before heavy rain, the pheasant feather found on the hill, and the distinct way that the light unfolds,” Lemoine says in a statement. “I want to highlight that it is our connection to these seemingly insignificant details that over time informs our sense of belonging.”

Find more on Lemoine’s Instagram. (via LensCulture)

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When Austin Bell first visited Hong Kong in 2017, he was struck by the chromatic vibrancy of its public basketball courts. Coming from the U.S., where these surfaces are often the neutral and uninteresting textures of asphalt and other materials, he was compelled to document the range of vivid color combinations, especially within the context of high-rise neighborhoods and urban infrastructure.

Bell set out to capture 2,549 outdoor basketball courts around Hong Kong—every single one there is in the region. The resulting series, SHOOTING HOOPS, not only highlights the physical courts but conveys a unique portrait of the region and the spaces where people can mingle. “To me, basketball courts are one of the most interesting subjects for aerial photography because they look so different from above than the ground,” Bell tells Colossal. “Their flatness and geometric design become an almost extraterrestrial tableau—like concrete crop
circles.”

For such a densely populated place, Bell’s images are often devoid of people, giving the colorful scenes a subtle ghostly feel. Looking closely, though, you can often see passersby out and about, illustrating the abiding popularity of these urban recreation parks. “One of the newest ones is at a playground called Chung Sing, which is so named for the sound a bell makes, so the designers stylized the surrounding area with audio waveforms,” Bell says.

Bell captured the photos in 2019, trawling Google Maps’ satellite imagery and using his drone to explore spaces between buildings and trees. Over the course of 140 days of shooting during multiple visits, he took more than 40,000 photos. He often photographed from dawn to dusk, and it wasn’t unusual for him to shoot upwards of 100 courts in a day. Once, he meticulously planned a route and captured a mind-boggling 475 courts in a single day.

“The insane became mundane,” Bell says in a statement. “I had become an obsessive completist, unable to rest until I found every court in the city. My obsession was fueled by two desires: to show an unseen perspective of Hong Kong and to fully explore a city that I feel so captivated by.”

Find more on Bell’s Instagram, and purchase the photo book from his webshop.

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Jan Erik Waider has a knack for capturing shorelines, volcanic eruptions, and glaciers at their most mesmerizing—shrouded in mist, glowing in the darkness, or illuminated by pale northern light. His atmospheric photographs of icy seas and rugged landscapes from Iceland to the Antarctic, focus on dramatic forms and cast remote places into a dreamy ethereality.

Most recently, Waider captured a striking phenomenon in the Baltic Sea, just off the coast of northern Germany. Fresh ice formed a thin layer on the rolling surface, creating faceted, polygon-like shapes that moved gently and rhythmically with the waves without breaking apart.

Waider’s aerial drone perspective creates an otherworldly, almost totally abstract effect. At first glance, it appears as though it could be a minimalist animation highlighting the interactions between water, light, and motion. “Soft evening light, fine crack lines, and shifting tones from warm gold to deep green turned this fleeting moment into a study of structure, depth, and calm,” Waider says.

See more on Waider’s YouTube channel, Instagram, and Behance.

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Tensely contorted or standing pin straight, Ben Zank’s signature faceless subjects evoke ineffable yet familiar emotions.

The New York City-based photographer has a knack for turning ordinary settings and unaccompanied figures into strangely perplexing sights. Mismatched socks, bold garments, and awkward poses go a long way in evoking a visceral response through his lens, tapping into a sort of uncanny realism.

Zank’s work traveled to Festival Cargo Les Photographiques—a.k.a. The Cargo Festival—in Saint-Nazaire, France last summer. Since its debut in 2022, the annual event typically features several outdoor exhibition areas, highlighting contemporary photographers.

The artist’s plein air installation for the festival included large reproductions of images affixed to leaning wooden pallets and covering brick walls. The minimalist, Earth-toned portraits complemented their surroundings, scattered across sparse grounds.

Zank is currently working on a series that is focused on capturing strangers in their own homes, rather than the constructed settings he typically employs. Find more from the artist on Instagram.

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