I remembered the junction and returned the next day. It was getting late, and I stayed near the destroyed buildings. At a crossroads, we met the same men. They were selling oil on the street, something impossible just weeks earlier, before Asad fell.

One man stood by the fire. I stayed still, so did he. I shifted through my ISO from 6400 to 3200 and fast shutter to slower settings I felt I wanted to keep the quality better. I waited for a car to pass, filling the frame before releasing the shutter.

I had seen this scene a few days before but could not photograph it. Then that evening I went back , a pool worker was cleaning the water, which was interesting, but it needed something else. On the last day we drove back up the mountain just for this image. This moment was it.

In the west we saw a side of Ukraine that is rarely talked about. We were in Drahobrat, where two women sat in a heated outdoor pool with champagne. It is said to be the highest pool in the country. Soldiers and families come here to escape the constant pressure of war.

In February I joined Jaschar Dugalic in Kosovo. We worked on several stories, one was about Hotel Gracanica. In the home of Lidija Tokic Fazliu, an aquarium stood in the corner. Her husband had just brought home fish, the bag floating in the tank so the temperature could adjust.

That image stayed with me. The fish felt like a quiet metaphor for Kosovo itself. Serbian communities living inside a bubble. Alive, present, but isolated within the environment surrounding them, suspended between belonging and separation.

Leica Q3 43mm, ISO 3200, F/4.5, 1/250

A rocket hit a playground where children were playing with their families. 9 children were killed. When we heard about the attack, we left immediately for Kryvyi Rih, first to the playground then to document the aftermath and the human cost of rockets hitting residential areas.

I knew this was the moment. An AP photographer and I took two or three steps closer. It was uncomfortable, but the family allowed it. This image felt necessary, to stand in for all the children killed that day.

Because I usually work in war zones, I wanted to understand how the country I live in deals with conflict, war, and being a soldier. I spent time with young Swiss militia soldiers during their annual refresher training, their WK.

Being in the Schwägalp, one of my favourite places to photograph, made it special. I used a slow shutter and pushed the ISO to catch as much light as possible, including the flares. I wanted the scene to feel unreal, because it felt absurd.

As the war gets worse, it has become harder to reach the front. We managed to get to a middle point where the soldiers from Khartia unit returned.

They had walked around 20 kilometers out of the frontline, with friendly drones watching over them to make sure they were not attacked.

It was already dark when they arrived. The men jumped off the pickup at the base. Some looked completely broken. One soldier collapsed. A small light hit him. I dropped the shutter as low as I could and hoped neither of us would move. I had two frames. One was sharp.

Somehow, we gained access to the Iranian embassy in Beirut. We photographed a press conference and spoke briefly with those willing to talk. Moving through the building, we came across this installation on a staircase.

Portraits of martyred figures from Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance were displayed as cut-out images along the main staircase inside the Iranian embassy. Set against the Al-Aqsa Mosque and ringed by fake flowers, it felt staged, ceremonial, and deeply absurd.

Earlier the hospital had been quiet. When I arrived this time, wounded government fighters were suddenly brought in, likely from the same firefight we had left. I walked in unnoticed, made the photographs, and left. Chaos made it possible for me to do my thing.

For a change, this assignment was very different. While still connected to the war in Ukraine, I was embedded on a German coast guard vessel patrolling the Baltic Sea, tasked with identifying and monitoring Russia’s so called shadow fleet.

She was open and strong, but deeply marked by loss. We looked through photographs of her son together. It was clear he was still present in her daily life, even though he was gone.

She told me about a small stuffed toy that still belonged to him. She reached up to the top of the closet to take it down. I photographed her hands stretching toward it. For me, that gesture held the memory of her son.

We worked through the day, and as the sun went down, the heat eased and people came out. I started looking for light, anything that could briefly illuminate faces, foreground or background, without adding anything artificial.

Two young women walked along the road. I moved parallel with them, waiting. A car or motorbike passed and lit them for a second. I try to work only with the light that is already there and make the most of it.

We traced people connected to Ahmed al-Shara throughout his life, from childhood to adulthood. Once labeled a terrorist and linked to al Qaeda, he is now received at the White House. That radical shift shaped the questions behind this story.

On my last trip of the year, I worked with Volker, the new Ukraine correspondent. We covered several stories in and around Kyiv, as well as in other cities across the country.

One story still unpublished focuses on blackouts after Russian attacks hit the power grid and heating infrastructure. This photograph was taken from my hotel room in Kyiv as electricity failed across this part of the city.