In the Spring of 2009, the photographer Richard Mosse traveled to Iraq, where he captured arresting images of U.S. soldiers working and living in what used to be palaces of Saddam Hussein. These visions of western soldiers at rest in imperial palaces are both intensely jarring and oddly playful, and they underscore the seemingly ineffable experience of downtime during a military occupation. The transformation of an imperial palace into a site of temporary housing also speaks to…

Dubai can seem more like a mirage than any place on Earth—even in the shade, it’s marvelously bright. Whether the city is the most precious gem in the United Arab Emirates’ crown or merely a piece of costume jewelry is up for debate; regardless, its very presence is remarkable. But for all its pomp and extravagance, there are real people who work and live there. Through the lens of the photographer Dustin Aksland, who recently traveled…

Earlier this year, we started running new collections of photos from prominent and up-and-coming photographers who are exploring the world in interesting ways. We call them Picture Shows, and each Wednesday we feature a new artist’s work. So far we’ve run 37 of these Picture Shows, which have offered visual explorations on a range of topics: the closing of a GM plant in Ohio, the contents of strangers’ refrigerators, and the way of life in…

As the home of the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar, the city of Medellín, Colombia, used to be one of the most violent places in the world. Today, the cells and grounds of its Bellavista prison are largely populated with people who grew up in and around the city. It’s an intimidating place, to say the least, yet as is evident in the images of Vance Jacobs’s photographic series “Colombian Prison: A View from the…

The ongoing battle between medical marijuana advocates and law enforcement has begotten some tricky legality, which has lead to all sorts of uncertainty regarding growth and distribution, and, ultimately, prosecution (or non-prosecution) of distributors. Meanwhile, in places like Northern California’s Mendocino County, it’s currently harvest season for marijuana growers. Last year at this time, the photographer Mathieu Young ventured up north to document, with neither judgment nor agenda, a mid-fall marijuana harvest. “On the one hand it…

Situated in the northeast corner of Guatemala’s Zacapa province, near the rural town of Gualán is the Zacapa hospital, where volunteers with the NGO Hearts in Motion regularly travel to offer emergency care, fix cleft lips and palates, and perform orthopedic surgeries that are much in need and otherwise hard to come by. While documenting some of Hearts in Motion’s work, Chris Davis traveled to the Zacapa province to photograph the hospital and the people it serves in…

For five centuries, the residents of Potosi, Bolivia, have lived and died in the mines of Cerro Rico, or “rich mountain.” The name, one could argue, is painfully ironic: Although the mountain has been a veritable trove of silver, it has been imperialists, not the natives and Africans working the mines, who have enjoyed those riches. “At one point in the mid-17th century, the town’s population was greater than that of London or Paris or Rome,”…

The photographs on the pages of Ed Ruscha’s book Twentysix Gasoline Stations depict filling stations across the United States of America in the form of a stark, beautiful, and modern travel narrative. Inspired by Ruscha’s seminal work, the Japanense-Danish photographer Eric Tabuchi—who describes his fondness for petrol stations by likening their logos to coats of arms—took the concept into new territory with his project, “Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations,” which focused on nonoperational stations in various states of…

If Mexico City is a book, then it’s one that’s constantly being rewritten. For the photographer Brian Rosa the city is in a constant state of flux and reinvention—never completely finished; never completely reinvented. He began photographing the place while living there on a research fellowship focusing on the large scale planning that occurred in Mexico City leading up to the national Centennial Celebration of 1910. Seeing a discrepancy between “the rigid central planning of [that…

When Richard Ross’s visual exploration of natural history museums, Museology, was published by Aperture in 1989, its hallmark was a series of photographs of museum dioramas depicting animals in built environments. These dioramas, generally set behind a wall of glass that divided the viewer from the object of his or her observation, were constructed so as to capture the essence of an animal within its natural setting. In recent years, however, when Ross returned to those…

Earlier this year, we started running new collections of photos from prominent and up-and-coming photographers who are exploring the world in interesting ways. We call them Picture Shows, and each Wednesday we feature a new artist’s work. So far we’ve run 37 of these Picture Shows, which have offered visual explorations on a range of topics: the closing of a GM plant in Ohio, the contents of strangers’ refrigerators, and the way of life in…

In the Spring of 2009, the photographer Richard Mosse traveled to Iraq, where he captured arresting images of U.S. soldiers working and living in what used to be palaces of Saddam Hussein. These visions of western soldiers at rest in imperial palaces are both intensely jarring and oddly playful, and they underscore the seemingly ineffable experience of downtime during a military occupation. The transformation of an imperial palace into a site of temporary housing also speaks to…

Dubai can seem more like a mirage than any place on Earth—even in the shade, it’s marvelously bright. Whether the city is the most precious gem in the United Arab Emirates’ crown or merely a piece of costume jewelry is up for debate; regardless, its very presence is remarkable. But for all its pomp and extravagance, there are real people who work and live there. Through the lens of the photographer Dustin Aksland, who recently traveled…

As the home of the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar, the city of Medellín, Colombia, used to be one of the most violent places in the world. Today, the cells and grounds of its Bellavista prison are largely populated with people who grew up in and around the city. It’s an intimidating place, to say the least, yet as is evident in the images of Vance Jacobs’s photographic series “Colombian Prison: A View from the…

The ongoing battle between medical marijuana advocates and law enforcement has begotten some tricky legality, which has lead to all sorts of uncertainty regarding growth and distribution, and, ultimately, prosecution (or non-prosecution) of distributors. Meanwhile, in places like Northern California’s Mendocino County, it’s currently harvest season for marijuana growers. Last year at this time, the photographer Mathieu Young ventured up north to document, with neither judgment nor agenda, a mid-fall marijuana harvest. “On the one hand it…

Situated in the northeast corner of Guatemala’s Zacapa province, near the rural town of Gualán is the Zacapa hospital, where volunteers with the NGO Hearts in Motion regularly travel to offer emergency care, fix cleft lips and palates, and perform orthopedic surgeries that are much in need and otherwise hard to come by. While documenting some of Hearts in Motion’s work, Chris Davis traveled to the Zacapa province to photograph the hospital and the people it serves in…

For five centuries, the residents of Potosi, Bolivia, have lived and died in the mines of Cerro Rico, or “rich mountain.” The name, one could argue, is painfully ironic: Although the mountain has been a veritable trove of silver, it has been imperialists, not the natives and Africans working the mines, who have enjoyed those riches. “At one point in the mid-17th century, the town’s population was greater than that of London or Paris or Rome,”…

The photographs on the pages of Ed Ruscha’s book Twentysix Gasoline Stations depict filling stations across the United States of America in the form of a stark, beautiful, and modern travel narrative. Inspired by Ruscha’s seminal work, the Japanense-Danish photographer Eric Tabuchi—who describes his fondness for petrol stations by likening their logos to coats of arms—took the concept into new territory with his project, “Twentysix Abandoned Gasoline Stations,” which focused on nonoperational stations in various states of…

If Mexico City is a book, then it’s one that’s constantly being rewritten. For the photographer Brian Rosa the city is in a constant state of flux and reinvention—never completely finished; never completely reinvented. He began photographing the place while living there on a research fellowship focusing on the large scale planning that occurred in Mexico City leading up to the national Centennial Celebration of 1910. Seeing a discrepancy between “the rigid central planning of [that…

When Richard Ross’s visual exploration of natural history museums, Museology, was published by Aperture in 1989, its hallmark was a series of photographs of museum dioramas depicting animals in built environments. These dioramas, generally set behind a wall of glass that divided the viewer from the object of his or her observation, were constructed so as to capture the essence of an animal within its natural setting. In recent years, however, when Ross returned to those…

In the short time since fast food chains have become part of our national (and global) culture, a number of burger shops have begotten some truly iconic–and insalubrious—food items, the mass production and marketing of which is utterly astounding. However, when removed from their brightly colored wrappers and shot against a stark, clinical background, as in the case of Jon Feinstein’s photographic series, “Fast Food,” the archetypal snacks and sandwiches take on a decidedly unsettling quality.

“There’s…