This is by no means an exhaustive list of powerful photos for Black History Month, but it is a carefully curated one. Impressive in scope, the series shines most looking at the early instances of African American life captured on film, and transitions seamlessly to still omnipresent issues within our society, taking the highs and lows in equal measure. —Kate Bubacz, deputy photo director, BuzzFeed News
What does it mean to be called an American? Robert Frank's seminal 1958 book of photographs, The Americans, asks this question by capturing more than just a portrait of midcentury life in the US — it revealed the stark divides that were brewing amid lines of class, culture, and race. Frank, a Swiss American who traveled the country with a Guggenheim Grant to complete the work, was once criticized for this work as derogatory and unpatriotic, but today is hailed as a groundbreaking documentarian who through his pictures was able to place a mirror to country and reveal a bit more of what it means to be called an American. —Gabriel H. Sanchez, photo essay editor, BuzzFeed News
The harrowing stories of Rohingya women is presented here in a succinct manner yet heavy with meaning. Every photo is laden with the feeling of confinement, where the understanding and desire to be truly free is evident but the realization that freedom is harder to attain weighs greatly. This feature gets close to how people from the outside can begin to take in the extent of the plight of these women — through their stories and photos — and why the need for pieces like this remain important well after the news cycle dies down. —Anna Mendoza, photo editor, BuzzFeed Australia
The tenderness in this piece is inspiring as Amy Sacka brings home her keen eye for humanity to explore the domestic. The scenes of friendship, camaraderie, and communal chores lay bare the building of an unorthodox family from strangers into roommates into something more. —K.B.
This essay opens doors to one of the largest and most notorious jails in the country: Cook County Jail in Chicago. The images sharply highlight the difficult balance of being an individual in a vast institution, with portraits holding the center of the series only briefly before spinning the viewer back into a maze of wings, corridors and conditions. —K.B.
BuzzFeed's Lauren Yapalater has dived deep into murky depths of the 2000s-era pop culture to surface a collection of the most bedazzled, flip-phoned, and frosted-tipped pictures of the era, taken from none other then iconic set of MTV's Total Request Live. For me, TLR was my 2000s bible on everything music, movies, and culture — but after seeing these pictures, I think some things are better left in the past. —G.H.S.
If there was ever a time aerial photography was necessary, it's for coverage of events like the Dakar Rally. This Reuters feature takes advantage of its resources to capture the sport in all its magnificence, but also its isolation; it's not just for the sake of it, as many aerial shots are excessively used these days among the drone generation of photographers. Carlos Jasso's shots also transcend conventional sports photography, where his love for abstracts marries well with his main purpose to document the event and has resulted to stunning artworks in every frame. —A.M.
From President Trump's declaration of a national emergency on the US–Mexico border to the Best in Show at the 143rd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, these are the most striking and memorable pictures from this past week.