Magdalena Wosinska spent the 1990s hanging out with bands, skateboarders and whoever else crossed her path. These photos capture blissful free spirits

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When Mikko Takkunen relocated to the Chinese city from New York he felt the urge to capture its vanishing essence

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Justine Kurland’s images capture her unique life raising a child on the road – and offer up a joyous escape from the traditional family photo album

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Nick Waplington’s Living Room caused a sensation when it was published, with its glimpses of everyday homes in Thatcher’s Britain. As his shots go on show, the photographer looks back on a seismic work

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This new biography describes Haring as a nimble, spontaneous performer and an artist of endearing naivety who was nevertheless corrupted by his popularity

Keith Haring’s career began underground, but soon zoomed to stratospheric altitudes. His cartoons of irradiated babies, attributed to an anonymous scribbler known as Chalkman, began to crawl along the walls of New York subway stations in 1978. A few years later, now a household name, Haring was shuttling across the Atlantic by Concorde, commissioned to daub liberating slogans on the Berlin Wall, to paint gymnasts cavorting on a tower at a children’s hospital in Paris, and to decorate a Tuscan monastery with a crucified Christ who supports a lolloping dolphin on his bowed shoulders. A typical side trip took him to Monaco to receive an award from Princess Caroline. In his spare time he lucratively sketched a label for Absolut vodka, painted a BMW, and opened the Pop Shop to sell branded T-shirts in New York and Tokyo.

In 1990 Haring died, struck down by Aids at the age of 31. Among his regrets was his exclusion from the Museum of Modern Art’s galleries, where he thought he belonged with Klee and Léger. Classed as a scrawler of graffiti, he was confined to the gift store in the museum’s lobby, which did a brisk trade in the toddler-themed souvenirs he trademarked. Another unfulfilled ambition rankled: nearing death, he confided that he “really wanted to design a pair of sneakers”. And why not? As Brad Gooch points out, he often painted on the downtrodden Manhattan pavements that he shared with “the usual traffic of pimps, prostitutes, winos and junkies”; his art was street-smart, as twinkle-toed as his dancing marathons at gay discos on Saturday nights, when his sneakers sometimes made music because he accessorised them with ankle bells.

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The life and untimely death of Keith Haring, whose work burst with vitality and warmth

Madonna is on the road with her Celebration tour. The show-stopping moment is her song Live to Tell, in which she pays tribute to friends – and the multitudes she didn’t know – who died from Aids. Keith Haring’s bespectacled and adorably geeky face is one of those displayed on a huge screen. He was only 31 when he died in 1990, Madonna having called him on his deathbed. One of the most harrowing sections in Radiant, a compelling biography of the artist by Brad Gooch, describes Haring’s friend Bruno Schmidt encouraging him to take off his T-shirt on the beach on one of the artist’s final holidays, then being appalled by what was revealed: a back completely blackened by Kaposi’s sarcoma, the skin cancer Aids patients often developed.

Haring’s cruel fate still seems outrageous. How can a man whose work bursts with such warmth and vitality have died so young? Gooch’s meticulous retelling of his story underlines the loss. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and brought up in nearby Kutztown, Haring went though several teen identities – evangelical Christian, Grateful Dead fan – until he found himself in New York in 1978. Galvanised by emerging hip-hop culture, of which graffiti was a pillar, Haring realised that his drawings should not be confined to gallery walls. One day, he noticed that the matt black paper exposed when advertising hoardings on the subway were left vacant was ideal for making quick artworks in chalk.

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They can be sacred, space-like, healing or heart-shaped – and anywhere on Earth. Even war can’t get between people and natural springs, as Greta Rybus shows in her latest photobook

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The award’s chair of judges talks us through the contenders – from a study of AI’s underbelly to a poignant autobiography – and why they made the final six
• The Women’s prize for nonfiction shortlist

As chair of judges for the inaugural Women’s prize for nonfiction, it has been a privilege to read some of the best work produced in English by women in the last year. From our longlist of 16 fantastic titles, my fellow judges Venetia La Manna, Nicola Rollock, Anne Sebba, Kamila Shamsie and I have chosen a shortlist of six must-read books.

The first (in order of author’s surname) is Thunderclap , by Observer art critic Laura Cumming. The author draws attention to the genius of an overlooked artist, Carel Fabritius and, by extension, makes us look anew at the whole of Dutch art. Amid this she weaves in sections of memoir about her artist father. Deeply researched and meticulously wrought, this is tender, electric and highly original. Cumming has a real gift for putting paintings into words: she helps the reader to see things that they might have otherwise missed. She is a master of structure, and her diction is gorgeous, while the revelation on the last page is breathtakingly poignant.

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George Hoyningen-Huene’s images of movie stars, exotic locations and fashion trends defined an era – as this first book on his work in decades shows

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