Pictures of the year - September

A vending machine, brought inland by the 2011 tsunami that wrecked Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, is seen in an abandoned rice field. After the disaster, about 160,000 people living near the plant were ordered to move out and the government established a 20-km compulsory evacuation zone.

Damir Sagolj: “If you have ever been to Japan, you know how big vending machines are there. Shiny, blinking boxes, sucking tons of energy and ready to serve you cold and hot drinks are everywhere.

In coastal areas of Fukushima prefecture, wrecked by the 2011 tsunami, that ‘everywhere’ gets a totally different meaning. From a field near Minamisoma, probably a good half-mile from the sea, one of these shiny red boxes sprouted.

I knew about it, I’d already seen pictures of that Coca Cola box, brought inland by a powerful wave, so I drove inside the exclusion zone around the crippled nuclear plant to check it out for myself.

I had plenty of time to walk around the red machine that appeared to scream from a depressing emptiness, to choose the angle and the lens, but every picture I took was equally, absurdly beautiful.

Just as beautiful was the whole area – beaches alongside a blue ocean, green hills and fertile rice fields. Only some other strange fruits grow here – cars on top of a building, a piano in river, a vending machine in a field.”

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III, lens 50mm, f2, 1/8000, ISO 100

Palestinian groom Ahmed Soboh, 15, and his bride Tala, 14, stand inside Tala's house during their wedding party in the town of Beit Lahiya, near the border between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip.

Mohammed Salem: “I got a phone call from a friend asking if I wanted to photograph a wedding in Gaza. I told him I wasn’t interested but when he told me the groom was 15 years old and the bride was one year younger, I rushed to the location immediately.

After arriving I saw people celebrating in the street not far from the border between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip. Among them was a young Palestinian boy being carried on the shoulders of relatives and friends. I couldn’t believe that the boy was the groom until I asked him and he replied with a smile: ‘Yes I am’.

After he finished celebrating at a party held a day before the official wedding, he went to play with friends in the street where they enjoyed flavoured frozen drinks.

The second day I went back and continued covering the story; the official wedding was to take place that day. I was surprised when I saw the groom’s mother helping him put on his wedding suit. I couldn’t avoid thinking that it looked as if she were dressing him for school. After that he started combing his hair using a broken piece of a mirror.

I realised how poor the family was when I noticed that he and his wife share the three-room house with the rest of the family – another nine people.

I asked the young groom if I could go with him into the house where the bride was getting prepared. When we entered the house, which was only next door, I realised that the family had not yet repaired the damage that was caused from an Israeli strike in 2009.

When young Soboh looked at his bride and saw she was veiled, his face became frank and serious. At that moment the bride spoke to her groom and said, 'let’s smile and have our photo taken'. One thing she forgot to do before posing for the photograph was to remove her veil.”

Camera: Canon EOS-1DX, lens 35mm, f1.4, 1/125