Sweden-based travel photographer Lola Akinmade Åkerström reflects on the invisible barriers that stand between her (and every traveler’s) camera and the strangers that become the subjects of many of her most powerful photos.

Cultural historian Benjamin Wild writes on a newly discovered portrait of Tudor monarch Elizabeth I — one that, unlike previously known depictions, doesn’t show her as a perfectly poised queen.

Photographer Sophia Hsin uses her camera to speak out against child labor: “Now that I know about these things, it seems quite foolish to stay silent.”