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Riders at the Tour of Romandie as they 'enjoy' cycling through dense snow

Mitch Epstein's photographs of New York trees are a wonderful reminder of nature's place in the metropolis

Formost of 2011 Mitch Epstein wandered the five boroughs of New York in search of trees. Following on from his epic series, American Power, which focused on the looming architecture of oil and gas, this smaller, more local project was, he writes, "about photographing something to honour, rather than mourn". It is also about looking and seeing; about the way nature, resilient, enduring, can go almost unnoticed in a big city.

New York Arbor is a book of black and white photographs of city trees, both native and imported: cottonwoods, cypresses, beeches, elms, lindens, maples, sycamores and willows. Epstein mentions two touchstones for the project: Eugène Atget, who photographed trees in Paris in the early 20th century, and Robert Adams, who has recorded the decimation of native forests in the Pacific Northwest over the past few decades.

Here, though, the tone is more reflective. Epstein makes you see, not just the trees on the streets and parks of New York, but their often unnoticed presence in the city. Many's the time I have sat under the English elm in Washington Square park without knowing that it was nicknamed the Hangman's Elm (because, legend has it, it was where revolutionary war traitors were hanged). Who knew, too, that Brooklyn can boast a caucasian wingnut, or Queens a beautiful tulip tree, or the Bronx a spreading white oak?

Epstein's gaze is democratic. He allows each tree its own space – and place – whether in a park, a street or protected in a botanic garden. He shows how they become features in an urban landscape of concrete and steel, towering above suburban house in Queens and Long Island or fighting for light amid the tall towers of Manhattan. Certain trees have become almost totemic: the ancient and colossal tulip tree in residential Queens known as the Alley Pond Giant; the leaning American elm on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, supported by a solid block of reinforced concrete; the ancient English elm on St Nicholas Avenue in upper Manhattan whose branches need steel cable to keep them from falling.

A bald cypress on a suburban street in Queens looks marooned and forlorn, while an eastern white pine in Owl's Head park in Brooklyn lends the setting an elemental aspect. You can see how trees – and even a single tall tree – can change the atmosphere of a neighbourhood. Drug dealers congregate by the English Elm in Washington Square, peddling their dime bags as if camouflaged by its foliage.

These New York trees are metaphorical, too. "Despite their swampy or mountainous or tropical origins," writes Epstein "these immigrant trees, alongside their native counterparts, still thrive in New York City. The trees remind me of the human immigrants who continually arrive in New York, who creatively adapt to a brutal yet tolerant city, and rarely abandon their original character."

New York Arbor is published in the UK on 1 June

• Art and design
• Photography
• New York
• Trees and forests
• Science and nature

Sean O'Hagan
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In the aftermath of the Utøya island shooting in Norway in November 2011, Andrea Gjestvang began taking portraits of its young survivors. Her pictures won her the top prize at the Sony World Photography awards

Gallery: One Day in History

Eirin Kristin Kjær was shot four times in the midriff at close range just after 5.30pm. Anders Breivik, the shooter, had used hollow-tipped bullets designed to cause large exit wounds and maximum injury as he picked his way across the island of Utøya, executing anyone he found. One of the first to be shot, Kjær sat down by the shore and waited to die. "I was certain I would bleed to death," she says. "Or that he would return and shoot me."

Seventy-seven were killed by Breivik on 22 July 2011 in his rampage against the youth wing of the Labour party. But what of the 517 people on the island who somehow, often through sheer luck, survived?

Their stories have now been captured by Andrea Gjestvang in her portrait series, One Day in History. The 31-year-old, named Photographer of the Year at last week's Sony World Photography awards, where she took the L'Iris D'Or prize, has spent six months documenting the rehabilitation of the youngsters who witnessed Breivik's methodical killing spree and who were then expected to carry on with their lives. Some had hidden in the forest; others tried swimming to safety. "I wanted to find out how they had changed, how their lives had changed," she says. "I wanted to try and found out what this did to them."

Many survivors told her they had made the transition from adolescent to adult during the time of the massacre, as witnessed in her pictures. By the time Breivik stopped shooting, they were different people. And while some said they had emerged from the experience stronger, many others have been left with a sense of the futility of life. Then there is the fear of being shot, even as they return to their usual routines. "They have constant nightmares. They have lost friends, siblings, boyfriends, girlfriends," says Gjestvang. "Some were very sad. They had a gravity that doesn't really belong to a young person."

Kjær has made a remarkable physical recovery – she plays sports, including kickboxing, and is studying political theory at university. The sheer magnitude of the horror, she says, made it impossible to process mentally. "Sometimes it bothers me that I can be so functional, like everybody else. This happened to me and I'm just like any other 21-year-old girl." Even when she recalls the moments Breivik shot her, the memory is shorn of trauma. "It's like a movie. I see all the faces, the blood, the injuries, but I cannot connect with it emotionally. I don't understand that it is what happened to me."

Gjestvang herself felt emotionally shattered after picturing each survivor, and found the project "very challenging". Born outside Oslo, she says the massacre at Utøya felt like a personal attack, a sentiment shared by most Norwegians. She hopes her series of photographs will prove cathartic to those who survived.

Others who witnessed the atrocities of Utøya aim to ensure the hatred that drove Breivik is vanquished. Kjær dreams one day of becoming a politician with the Labour party. "I want to take the politics from words and put them into action." One Day in History is on show as part of the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards exhibition at Somerset House until 12 May (somersethouse.org.uk)

• Sony world photography awards
• Anders Behring Breivik
• Photography
• Awards and prizes
• Norway
• Europe

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Photographer Andrea Gjestvang's poignant portraits of survivors of the Utøya massacre in Norway in November 2011 have won her the top prize at the Sony World Photography awards

The award-winning film director picks her cultural highlights of the moment, from Haneke's Amour to The Book of Mormon

Born in Orissa, India, and educated at Delhi university and Harvard, film director Mira Nair is one of the few women to have won the Golden Lion award at Venice – for Monsoon Wedding in 2001. Nair splits her time between New York and Uganda and has founded two non-profit organisations: the Salaam Baalak Trust for street children in India, established using the proceeds from Salaam Bombay!, her 1988 debut feature; and Maisha, an educational centre in east Africa. Her new film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is an adaptation of Mohsin Hamid's novel and is out 10 May.

Film: Amour

I look out for anything by Michael Haneke. The worlds he creates are taut and mysterious, and in this case, full of unspoken love. I love the austerity and the love in Amour, and of course the performances. I was really taken in by it, as I was with his gorgeous black and white film, The White Ribbon, about an Austrian village. He listens to his own drum and is so unhurried, it's just beautiful.

Music: Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad – Kangna

We chose to start The Reluctant Fundamentalist with this song. It's a full eight minutes of live singing! It's a traditional song, but sung anew by a family. This sound totally inspires me and is what I paid homage to in the movie. I am sustained and nourished by this sound – in fact, I'm obsessed with the modern sound coming from Pakistan these days, where ancient qawwali singing is embedded in rock and modern foundations. This tradition that we've heard for generations is now made in a way that means the young are listening. It's a programme unfortunately titled Coke Studio, which records and puts out these modern versions of traditional singing to the people. It's hugely popular, mostly within the country, but thanks to music being music we are all nourished by it across the world. It's a fantastic modern sound from Pakistan.

Design: Geoffrey Bawa

I'm a self-taught landscape gardener; it's a real passion of mine. It's what I do in my spare time, because trees don't ask questions! I've just finished planting on the Nile in Uganda where we have some land; it's a wonderful non-filmic universe. One of my heroes in landscape design is Geoffrey Bawa, a Sri Lankan architect who died a few years ago. He was very influential in south Asian design and architecture. Beyond Bawa by David Robson shows the influence of his design in architecture and landscape in the world now. It's fantastic. I've been devouring it and learning from Bawa.

Photography: Sooni Taraporevala

I'm hugely fuelled by photography in my film work. I just saw a monumental show about Parsis, the Persian Zoroastrian community in India, at one of the oldest and most radical galleries in Mumbai, the Chemould Gallery, by my dear friend Sooni. She's a screenwriter and a remarkable photographer who's shot her community over 25 years. I was dazzled by the exhibition – the humanity of it, and the unsung, unseen, but great beauty of it. This was the first time I'd seen her work occupying a huge space. It really knocked me out. Hopefully the show will travel so more people get to see it.

Book: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

It sounds like a self-help book but it's actually an extraordinarily moving novel about the cycle of life and death in an unnamed country (which, for me, is clearly Pakistan). It's about living with generations and the stages of life a young man goes through to finally understand what is important.

Theatre: The Book of Mormon

I found this hilarious; it really is clever. In Uganda I am surrounded, unfortunately, by evangelicals; I can't bear it. Every night I hear the chants of Baptists urging people to be born again. Then along comes The Book of Mormon, which is not, for once, mired in political correctness, but has the intelligence to be subversive and understand that the so-called native is often cleverer than the person who has come to "show him the way". I saw it twice in New York; I think it's just fantastic. I'm in the midst of taking Monsoon Wedding to Broadway as a musical, so this was a great shot in the arm for that – showing that you can hold your voice and still make it on Broadway.

• World cinema
• Michael Haneke
• Theatre
• Design
• Photography

Corinne Jones
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Sheila Rock's fascinating photographs of punk, which have been turned into a lavish book, document the scene in its thrilling infancy. Nearly 40 years on, she explains why she never dreamed her work would prove so significant

'I was simply in the right place at the right time," says Sheila Rock of her archive of early punk photographs, which, having sat in a box in her garden shed for years, have been turned into a beautifully designed, limited edition book entitled Punk+. Having just arrived in London from America, Rock was invited to see the Patti Smith Group's now legendary performance at the Roundhouse in May 1976 by her friend, Lenny Kaye, Smith's guitarist. Kaye also told her about a punk group called the Clash, who were playing a few months later at the ICA. Intrigued, Rock went along with her camera and started snapping.

"I became a photographer there and then out of curiosity, and the photos I took add up to a kind of reportage of the early punk scene in London, though I had no idea that is what I was creating back then. I just drifted into the scene and was immediately struck by the creativity and style of these young people. In 1976, you could tell something was happening and these kids were at the vanguard of that change."

One of Rock's first locations was the Acme Attractions shop on the Kings Road, where she came upon the famous "Bromley contingent" that followed the Sex Pistols and included Siouxsie Sioux and Steve Severin, who would soon form Siouxsie and the Banshees. She was present when Acme's owner, John Krivine, relaunched the shop as Boy, lining the walls with black bin bags and creating a window display of fake burnt body parts. After complaints from the public, the police raided the shop and confiscated the offending items.

Further down the Kings Road, Rock also chronicled the early days of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's boutique, Sex, where shop assistant Jordan dressed head to toe in PVC. Quiet and unassuming, Rock became an insider on the fledgling London punk scene, shooting the Clash and Subway Sect in their shared Chalk Farm Road rehearsal studios as well as lesser-known bands such as Eater. "I recorded the trajectory from punk as a creative cultural upheaval to punk as a tabloid spectacle. Like the punks, I was making it up as I went along. Often, I'd go to the lab praying the photos would come out. I wasn't thinking about posterity, I was just going with the flow."

Punk+ is available to buy at firstthirdbooks.com/books/punk

A selection of Rock's photographs will be included in Punk: Chaos to Couture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York next month

• Punk
• Photography
• Sex Pistols
• Patti Smith

Sean O'Hagan
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A selection of images from Sheila Rock's Punk+, including shots of the Clash, Siouxsie Sioux and Billy Idol

Sean O'Hagan

The best news and culture images from around the world over the past seven days

Jim Powell

Motion blur and the vibrancy of the colours really bring this image alive and it conveys the 30+mph speeds that racehorses reach

Steven Bloor

A photographic highlight selected by the picture desk. This week, photographer Fabio Bucciarelli won the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal Award for his portfolio entitled Battle to Death taken during fighting in the Syrian city of Aleppo. The award is given for 'published photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise'.

Jim Powell

Readers' favourite photographs, songs and recipes

Snapshot: My father-in-law's great escape

Looking at this photograph of an elderly man, peacefully sunning himself in his garden with his granddaughter, it is hard to imagine that 70 years ago he was a young RAF navigator with Bomber Command.

Born in Hove in 1918, Frank Fisher lived in north London as a child. His family always holidayed in Bournemouth and he often hoped that he might live there someday.

Plucked from the safety of a job in insurance, Frank – my father-in-law – was on his 33rd mission when he parachuted out of his Halifax, after it was shot down on 16 April 1943. He was taken as a prisoner of war to Stalag Luft III, where The Great Escape actually happened, and remembers many of the characters later portrayed in the film. He said it was not at all like the Steve McQueen version.

An only child, he married Gladys, who was in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, after she fell for him – literally – when he knocked her off her bike in Wales, or so the family tale goes. After the war, he trained as a teacher, eventually becoming a headteacher, and they had two sons. The boys bucked the trend by producing three granddaughters.

Once, to entertain the girls, he decided to be a Dalek by sticking a rubber sucker on his forehead. He ended up in the doctor's surgery with a sore head and it took weeks to heal. I'm sure his pupils would love to have known, when he faced them in assembly after the weekend, the real reason for the strange mark.

When I turned up from Birmingham to marry his elder son, he could not have been more welcoming. I always remember his kindness, particularly saying we should value and preserve regional accents (mine was quite strong then). I loved discussing current events with him, particularly on education, as we were both teachers.

After Gladys died in 1988, he was lost for a while, but Frank insisted on continuing to provide family teas on Sundays, including making the red jellies that the girls adored.

Occasionally, we could coax this modest man into talking about the war: what it was like to jump from a burning plane, finding his way in the dark (in what he hoped was France or Belgium until he found a tombstone with German writing on it); and his sadness at hearing later that many of the escapees had been shot on the direct orders of Hitler.

But Frank was happiest putting all this behind him, leading a quiet life, later with his second wife, Doreen, whom he married in 1995. When the newlyweds moved to the coast, his long-term goal was achieved – to live in Bournemouth where he had felt so secure as a child. He also acquired a stepfamily of whom he became very fond.

Frank played the piano, ate very healthily before it became fashionable, and always went for a daily walk – he could still fit into his old RAF uniform in his 90s.

He died in August 2012, aged 93. His three grandchildren and three stepgrandchildren all made it to his funeral and his eldest granddaughter, Zoe, also a teacher (pictured with him in the Southbourne garden about 10 years ago) read from his war diary, written in the PoW camp. She pointed out that, typically of his generation, "Grandad never complained about risking his life."

I think this picture, which we keep on the door of our freezer, sums up the peace he felt to be alive and with his family on a sunny day in the garden; contentment he richly deserved. Barbara Fisher

Playlist: The awesome positivity of Demi

Strength, Courage and Wisdom by India Arie

"Strength, courage and wisdom / And it's been inside of me all along"

My cousin Demi was a beautiful young woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer at 19. Her two-year journey battling the disease was not only astounding to our family, but also left consultants, doctors, nurses – in fact everyone she met – in awe.

Despite having to deal with all the treatments and life-altering decisions, Demi found inner peace and a deep understanding of life. That's not to say she didn't suffer greatly, she absolutely did. The physical and mental pain of facing this terminal illness was more than we could ever imagine.

Her wonderful character turned the extremity of facing a ticking clock at such an early age into positivity. She decided to try everything she could to fight the disease and one major part of this self-healing process was finding her true self.

She taught all those who had the pleasure of meeting and knowing her strength, courage and wisdom.

This song became her anthem as it pretty much voiced what she felt. She was a gifted person and sang like an angel. Her passion and life force came out when she sang India Arie's lyrics.

The song was played at her funeral and the words remain in the hearts of my family and Demi's friends as a special gift she gave us. We live by the words in the chorus, knowing that if Demi was able to get that soul connection at 21 years of age, then we surely can – and must.

I hope her story gives other people strength, courage and wisdom too. Jane Cull

We love to eat: Jack's pie on a plate

Ingredients

Two large white onions

Six rashers of thick dry-cured bacon

Large handful of parsley (maybe more)

Salt and white pepper

Pastry

Enamel plate – see photograph

Roughly cut up the bacon: try different kinds, eg smoked, in different pies. The pieces need to be about 1cm to 2cm, but don't even think of being precise. Place it in a bowl.

Chop two onions finely and add to the bacon. Get a large handful of parsley. The dense, curly English variety is best. Finely chop and add to the bowl. Add salt and pepper. Mix very thoroughly. There is more onion, but the bacon should be well in evidence.

Roll out two circles of pastry roughly the diameter of the plate and slightly thicker than a pound coin. Lay one layer of pastry on the plate and evenly spread the mixture over the base of the plate. It should be about 2cm thick and slightly raised in the centre.

Moisten the edge of the pastry and place the second layer on top, gently pressing around the edges and on the top in general. Stab the top with a fork.

If poshness is required, a bit of crimping is in order and you can glaze it with a beaten egg, though Dad would have used the egg in another version of the pie, which wasn't that far removed from a quiche – unheard of in our corner of Devon.

Preheat the oven to 180C and bake for about 35 mins. Keep an eye on it – the pastry should be golden brown. Let it rest if possible for 30 minutes. It's best eaten when just warm.

The plate in question was one of those well-chipped enamelled things more recently available as trendy designer kitchenware, but our original, used in this recipe, was utilitarian 1940s ware. The pie-maker was Jack, my dad, a wonderful, instinctive cook who must have created hundreds of original recipes in his time.

His kitchen garden was an interesting place with the normal range of easily grown vegetables picked a few minutes before they appeared in a cooked form. The thing I had some difficulty in understanding as a lad was why some plants appeared in the quantity they did. For example, parsley. Each year, two very long rows of parsley seeds were planted and two very long rows of parsley appeared. What on earth did he want this much parsley for? There was plenty of mint but no sage or thyme. Tarragon, dill and chives were nowhere in this garden and, indeed, were difficult to come across anywhere.

This glut of parsley, though, gave rise to food containing rather more of it than any cook would normally recommend, and this led to some interesting flavours as is the case with the pie on a plate.

The dish is a simple thing and rarely survives more than a minute or two after it emerges from the oven. My dad was lucky if he managed to grab even one slice.

Colin Martin

We'd love to hear your stories

We will pay £25 for every Letter to, Playlist, Snapshot or We love to eat we publish. Write to Family Life, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU or email family@guardian.co.uk. Please include your address and phone number

• Family
• Photography
• Food & drink

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We starting to test the camera capabilities of the brand new Samsung Galaxy S4, but the guys at iFixit.com have been tearing theirs apart. The iFixit crew cracked open the S4 to see what its inner workings tell us about the latest flagship phone from Samsung, and how easily it can be repaired. The S4 came through iFixit's teardown with flying colors, receiving an 8 out of 10 repairability score for its replaceable battery and straightforward disassembly. Click through for all the gory details. 

Panasonic is now offering its Lumix DMC-XS1 compact camera - which was first introduced at CES in January - with ten custom 'skins'. The themes for these skins include pop art, gift wrapping, floral nature, digital, texture, and Japanese traditional. The XS1 features a 16 megapixel CCD, 5X (24-120 mm) optical zoom with image stabilization, a 2.7" LCD, and 720p video recording. The new 'skinned' XS1s are priced at $149 - a $20 premium over the red, silver, and black models that are currently available. We don't know yet if these designs will be available outside of the US in the future.

The first great French portrait photographer of the 19th century, Nadar was a master of visual biography and a fearless promoter of new scientific ideas

Nadar was the man who introduced me to Paris, and to romanticism. He was the first great French portrait photographer of the 19th century, and a master of visual biography. His Panthéon Nadar of 1854 was originally a collection of nearly 300 literary and artistic caricatures, drawn in an arch, psychologically penetrating style later inherited by the American cartoonist David Levine. By 1870, it had become a fantastic photographic archive, in which every writer, painter, musician, dancer, singer and actor of note in the second empire – from Victor Hugo to Édouard Manet, Hector Berlioz to Sarah Bernhardt – was not merely recorded, but shrewdly observed. His sequence of photographs of his friend Charles Baudelaire, for example, is in effect a life study of the poet. Nadar was a fearless promoter of new ideas and a master of surprise. He championed the revolutionary concept of the aeroplane by building, and nearly killing himself in an enormous 190ft‑high red gas balloon, Le Géant. He established the first-ever airmail service to escape the Prussian siege of Paris, thereby transforming French civilian morale. His balloons threw out thousands of business cards marked "Nadar's compliments to the Kaiser". After the Commune of Paris, he helped launch the impressionist painters by holding their first group exhibition at his studios in 1874. He left several volumes of witty, throw-away memoirs – notably, Quand j'étais Photographe (1900). Despite his rackety life, he lived to be 89. He was in some ways his own best creation, and "Nadar" was both an artistic signature and a shrewd commercial logo. His real name was Gaspard-Félix Tournachon: a tall, exuberant man with a vibrant circle of friends and a beloved wife. Jules Verne called him "an Icarus with replaceable wings". So this brooding self-portrait, taken in 1854, is a typical Nadar paradox. Never trust a biographer on the subject of himself. I shall always be grateful to him. Salut, Monsieur Nadar!

• Photography

Richard Holmes
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Zoe Spawton's photographs of Berlin's trendiest Turkish tailor

Hannah Booth

From sheep to squirrels: your best pictures on this week's theme, post

The next topic is delight

Guardian readers

A photographic highlight selected by the picture desk. Photographer Christian Aslund won the campaign category at the Sony world photography awards with this series of images from Hong Kong

Jim Powell

Anne Wilkes Tucker, author of War/Photography, explains the meaning and history of photography in armed conflict

Jim Powell

Kicking off our new series is this stunning image of fearless cyclist Adam Flint descending the Lawers Dam on Lochan na Lairige in Scotland

Jonny Weeks

We've just published our 25-page, in-depth review of the Nikon D7100. Sitting atop Nikon's APS-C DSLR lineup, the D7100 offers a 24MP CMOS sensor sans AA filter and a 51-point AF system that borrows heavily from the D4. In terms of ergonomics and handling the D7100 will feel familiar to D7000 users looking to upgrade, but it also inherits recent changes we've seen from Nikon in the D600 and D800 models. Is the D7100 a compelling option for enthusiasts tempted by the recent wave of affordable full frame DSLRs? Click through to find out.