“They’ve been obsessing me for years. I searched and found them in Benares, on the banks of the river Gange (India). They arrive here to get rid of everything and to wait for death. This existence can last for years, sometimes decades, almost a life. Opposite to mine, well organised and filled as a human life can be, to try in vain to push the limits of its end”. – Denis Rouvre. (Photo by Denis Rouvre)

A girl joins other novice nuns for a lunch at the Sathira-Dhammasathan Buddhist meditation centre in Bangkok April 21, 2013. A group of Thai girls are choosing to spend part of their school holidays as Buddhist nuns, down to having their heads shaven at the meditation centre. The centre, founded in 1987, is a learning community for peace and harmony that has programs open to people regardless of age and gender. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

Indigenous Q'eqchi girls practice taekwondo with their teacher, Danny Coy, on a dirt court in the middle of the village in Tipulcan village, San Pedro Carcha, Guatemala, on 25 November 2019 (issued 27 November 2019). Tipulcan village girls learn taekwondo to combat sexist violence and harassment they have suffered in their community in northern Guatemala. (Photo by Esteban Biba/EPA/EFE)

A girl with a ritual garland headdress smiles during a traditional Midsummer Night celebration, in the capital Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 6, 2020. Ukrainian girls believe the ages-old ceremony would help them to find their true love partners, as the pagan Slav festival is still celebrated in Ukraine, as Kyiv has lifted the coronavirus lockdown restrictions. (Photo by Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo)

Polish boys and girls throw water over each other on “Smigus-dyngus” (or Wet Monday) during the Easter Monday in Szczecin, northwestern Poland, 18 April 2022. Smigus-dyngus is a Roman Catholic celebration held on Easter Monday in Poland. Traditionally, boys throw water over girls, this is accompanied by a number of other rituals, such as making verse declarations and holding door-to-door processions. (Photo by Marcin Bielecki/EPA/EFE)

The Belgian photographer Anton Kusters spent two years photographing the Yakuza, Japan’s most notorious gang. He returned with some amazing images that he made into a book called “Odo Yakuza Tokyo”. (Odo means “the way of the cherry blossom” and is the credo of the Yakuza family he followed. Photo: An erotic danser picks up fake 2-dollar bills during a private dance with a Yakuza customer in a strip tease bar in Kabukicho, a bar which is controlled by the ODO family – 2010. (Photo and caption by Anton Kusters)