Around the world, Azerbaijan is seen as the victor in the 44-day Nagorno Karabakh war. But for scores of Azerbaijanis who lost their homes during the fighting, the atmosphere of triumph has been overshadowed by a growing uncertainty about what the coming months will bring.

Shahnaz, 29, and her husband Huseyn didn’t want to have children yet—they were young and they didn’t feel ready to bring a new life into the world. They were enjoying each other and being a family of two. 

“I don’t support being a parent at an early age, because at an early age people are not fully realized, they don't know what they want. How can a young person be a parent if they are not yet fully formed as an individual?”

Talysh - is the second biggest ethnic minority group in Azerbaijan. This south region of Azerbaijan is famous with gender problems, among others. Today, Talysh grandmothers became very popular for their musical culture. Talysh grandmothers could break the stereotypes and became loved by everyone in the country.

ColorFest is an annual colorful music festival. The first festival of colors was hold in the city of Quba in 2015 and gathered hundreds of people. The main tradition is to sprinkle each other with colorful spices. The second festival was held at Pepsi Beach, Baku, and gathered more than 300 people.  

Qocaqli, in the Khachmaz region of  Azerbaijan, is the only village in the country with “homemade” tractors:  vehicles without any semblance of a brand, constructed piece by piece by the farmers themselves. Almost every family in this village has a unique, hand-built tractor. 

From the beginning of the ‘90s: youth began to leave the village and now it is almost devastated. In the ‘90s a wave of emigration started from Ivanovka to Russia. Not only the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as economic crisis affected it, but the war with Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh (1988-1994) accelerated this tendency. People began to leave the village in search of a more stable life. Ivanovka, is the only village in Azerbaijan where a kolxoz (collective farm) still exists.

On April 26th, 1986 Eldar Sultanov was a police officer in Gostomel, 35 kilometres from Kiev, capital of the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. “I was sitting on the couch, watching the evening news. They showed the nuclear plant in Chernobyl engulfed by flames.”

It is the village of Jek (Cek in Azerbaijani). And its 300-some inhabitants, predominantly Sunni Muslims, consider themselves ethnic Jeks, descendants of the Caucasian Albanians, an ancient, semi-legendary people. Their language, part of the northeast Caucasus’ Lezgin group, is their calling card, they say. 

Sometimes parents are so busy traveling with the flock that they forget that their children are getting older and need an education.

The hobby of raising birds is a famous pastime in Azerbaijan, especially on the rooftops of Baku.

Azerbaijan’s forests are facing three major threats: clear-cutting, selective cutting and forest fires.

The start of crop farming has alarmed environmentalists, who fear the crop farms will destroy the land and force the gazelles to leave.

Celebrating births has become a major industry in Azerbaijan, where event planners say festivities to mark the arrival of a new baby can rival even wedding parties.

Statistically, Azerbaijan has the second highest rate of gender selective abortions in the world after China, according to research by the UN Population Fund.