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Marki Carter loads a funnel with beer as Dan Fluharty passes out in the chair next to her. Most nights at Skatopia are fairly quiet, with only a few people hanging around through the night, but even the small gatherings can get rowdy.

Skate Rats | Travis Dove

Less than 500 people live in the town of Rutland, OH, but hundreds more migrate in and out of its borders every year to visit one 88-acre farm called Skatopia.
#1 | Apr 2008 | View essay
Sam Dove, Mill wright; 30 years at Cytemp Specialty Steel.

Titusville Steel | Chris Crisman

Titusville Pennsylania survived for over a century, defined by the endless flock of men filing in and out of the steel mills every day.

#1 | Apr 2008 | View essay
A boy flies a kite from the rooftop of a house in a Caracas slum. Chavez draws much of his support from poor slums like this one, where people feel the oil's wealth has been squandered for the country, with only the wealthy benefiting.

Portfolio | Jacob Silberberg

A NYC-based photographer, Silberberg exposes the lives of those struggling to see another day in places like Lagos, Nigeria, and Iraq.
#1 | Apr 2008 | View essay
Sara, Icelandair

First Look: Flight Attendants | Brian Finke

Brian Finke's new book is a portrait of those wonderful men and women who help us fly the (occasionally) friendly skies.
#17 | Jan 2008 | View essay
A family on the embankments of the Buri ganga river. Most of the slums consist of poor housing within middle and lower class housing settlements.

Little Voice | Lisa Wiltse

Following the disastrous floods of 1998 the population of Dhaka, Bangladesh has risen to over 10 million, largely due to an influx of "climate refugees."
#17 | Jan 2008 | View essay
Lacing up skates during the final days at the Empire Roller Skating Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Last Saturday Night | Kelly Shimoda

In the spring of 2007 the final remaining roller disco skating rinks in New York closed, ending the era that was allegedly born more than three decades before in Crown Heights, Brooklyn at The Empire.

#17 | Jan 2008 | View essay

Portfolio | Cosmin Bumbut

Cosmin Bumbut’s work sits on the fence between the old world and the new. As one frame meets the next, the viewer is at once reminded of Josef Koudelka and Luc Delahaye.
#17 | Jan 2008 | View essay

First Look: Stuff I Gotta Remember Not to Forget | Darin Mickey

Darin Mickey's first book is a personal document of his father's life and work.

Nov 2007 | View essay
The Southerndown Quadrille team takes their horses for a walk on Coney Beach after performing an Elvis medley during the 2005 Porthcawl Elvis Festival in Porthcawl, Wales.

Portfolio | Landon Nordeman

With a focus on the marginal and usually unwitnessed moments of life and culture - all back stage breaks instead of dramatic finales - New York City-based freelance photographer Landon Nordeman's work balances his approach with a deep passion for color.
#16 | Oct 2007 | View essay
A frosted car window frames families bustling to a church in Vorokhta. Surpressed during Soviet rule, churches are potent symbols of independence, even for Ukrainians who rarely attend.

Borderland | Carolyn Drake

A nation in a perpetual state of transition, Ukraine is a country stuck in between a more open, modern future and a richly cultured, agrarian past, pulled tense in many directions and traditions that still lie under the shadows of former allies and empires.
#16 | Oct 2007 | View essay
A settler has a private morning prayer.

City of Fathers | Dan Seltzer

Last year's eviction of the Israeli settlers from Gaza reinforced the chasm between religious Jews and the mainstream, secular Israeli public. The same complicated arrangement is still found in Hebron, where several hundred settlers live in the middle of over 150,000 Palestinians in the ancient city.

#16 | Oct 2007 | View essay
A 15 year-old prostitute gets ready for a night of work in one of the many brothels found in Ethiopia. Over 3 million people are infected with the HIV virus in Ethiopia—the second highest infection rate in Africa.

Portfolio | Miki Alcalde

India-based Miki Alcalde's work breathes in from the street. His photography seems to be reaching out to his subjects at the exact moments as they transition from one place to the next.
#16 | Oct 2007 | View essay
Lebanese civil defense workers remove bodies from an Israeli airstrike in the residential neighbourhood of Chiyah, which killed more than 2 dozen people and wounded scores more.

Lebanon Conflict | Stephanie Sinclair

The civilian populations of Northern Israel and central and Southern Lebanon lived under siege for nearly 2 months during the late summer of 2006, as the Israeli military and Hezbollah paramilitary forces erupted in conflict in continuation of more than 20 years of fighting along the embattled border since the creation of the borderland buffer zone in 1982.
#15 | Mar 2007 | View essay
Gold Tooth Begay is laid to rest on his family's land on the Navajo reservation. Gold Tooth died at age 105 after giving his daughters the mission to return the Churro sheep to his family and the Navajo people.

Navajo | Stacia Spragg-Braude

United by a mission to rescue the Churro, an ancient breed of sheep facing near extinction in the 1970's, the Begay family has lived and died within a few miles radius of the Navajo Reservation in the heart of the American West, depending on each other and the land to sustain their livelihood and native culture.
#15 | Mar 2007 | View essay
Italy wins World Cup, Mulberry Street, 2006

Portfolio | Cary Conover

Editor of Visual Diaries.com, freelance photographer Cary Conover's street photography of New York City, and beyond, affectionately records the strange and beautiful found moments in daily life amid the energy of the urban landscape.
#15 | Mar 2007 | View essay
Men dig a grave for a recently deceased villager.

Mixteca | Matt Black

The Mixteca--a remote, mountainous region in Northern Oaxaca--is the heartland of indigenous Mexico. In its scattered and isolated villages, Spanish is rarely heard, cars, electricity and indoor plumbing are recent introductions if they exist at all, and life's schedule continues to be dictated by the planting and harvesting of corn.
#14 | Jan 2007 | View essay
He is a soldier in the 28s prison gang.

Die Vier Hoeke & Umjiegwana | Mikhael Subotzky

South Africa is in the midst of an unprecedented crime wave which is causing very real suffering and widespread panic. Swept away by the public's fear, stories of the criminals themselves are seldom heard, and the complex and environmental reasons behind these crimes rarely properly understood.
#14 | Jan 2007 | View essay
A landscape of the park.

Pocket Towns | Jon Lowenstein

Chicago's South Side is a sprawling collection of predominantly African-American neighborhoods that have been transformed by decades of racial change. Both the borders and futures of each neighborhood and its residents are uncertain, as families face dire obstacles such as crime, drugs, poverty, and inequitable access to education, jobs, and affordable housing.
#13 | Aug 2006 | View essay
Heading to market day in a neighboring village, two friends travel by horse-drawn cart, which is still the dominant mode of transportation in the region.

Romania | Davin Ellicson

As Romania stands on the brink of joining the European Union in 2007, metaphorically leaping into the modern West, the small county of Maramures remains entrenched in a life of centuries old tradition.
#13 | Aug 2006 | View essay
Red lanterns are stored in a room inside an artificial mountain at Song Dynasty Theme Park in Hangzhou. Lanterns are traditional symbols of good luck and prosperity in China.

Portfolio | Michael Brown

Freelance photographer Michael Brown says he became a photographer to "search for deeper connections between the world and myself by having and recording life experiences."
#13 | Aug 2006 | View essay
Jackie, Fort Lee, NJ

Portfolio | Shen Wei

Exploring identity and sexuality in America, New York-based art photographer Shen Wei's work is created in reaction to his upbringing in "isolated and conservative" China. Motivated by his desire to understand his own increased need for self-expression, he has created a portrait project focusing on emotional nakedness around the U.S.
Jul 2006 | View essay
Protesters carry away a demonstrator who was shot in the head and killed by riot police during clashes with the police in Kathmandu on April 20, 2006.

The Naked King | Tomas van Houtryve

The history of modern Nepal is the story of a country's bloody power struggle between a centuries-old tradition of monarchy and the repeated attempts of the people to create a lasting revolution and finally assert their freedom.
#13 | Jun 2006 | View essay
A woman bathes in Naftusya.

Sanatorium | Andres Gonzalez

Tucked away in the Carpathian Mountains of Western Ukraine are four natural healing springs running under the town of Truskavets. The water, called Naftusya, has been a source of healing for hundreds of years, and is said to cure a variety of ailments such as tuberculosis, arthritis, and hepatitis.
#13 | Jun 2006 | View essay
Two boys take a herd of yaks to the pastures early in the morning in Ladakh, India.

Portfolio | Tomas Munita

Chilean freelance photographer Tomas Munita's work is created in an effort to piece together and illuminate the common ground of human experience that we all share, and to gain a deeper understanding of both history and himself. "There is always an important subject behind any image."
#12 | Jun 2006 | View essay
Surrounded by uniform-clad men and women, an Army boxer listens for the bell to sound during a bout at Fort Huachuca.

Portfolio | Rich-Joseph Facun

Freelance photographer Rich-Joseph Facun acknowledges that his photography is a selfish act committed to simply try and understand himself and his world more deeply. Based in Virginia, Facun's work often serves as a mirror to his own life, focusing on what is not quite right and celebrating the lives of people living just outside of social conventions.
May 2006 | View essay
Country boy in Lullasaz at dusk, Nagorno-Karabakh

Caucasus | Toshiki Senoue

After centuries of invading armies and the clash of hundreds of different cultures, the Caucasus region, located between Russia and Asia, is not only the dividing line between Europe and the East, but it is also one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse places on Earth.
#11 | Apr 2006 | View essay

Marfa, TX | Allison V. Smith

Founded in the late 19th century as a railroad water stop, Marfa was a town in extreme West Texas, near the Mexico border, rooted in its utility.
Apr 2006 | View essay
A woman who lost her home and family lies in despair on the ground in the courtyard of a temple days after the tsunami hit in Nagapattinum, Tamil Nadu, India.

Portfolio | Ami Vitale

Ami Vitale is an American freelance photographer based overseas whose work has been widely recognized for its humanity and purposeful push to see past the differences between cultures and race and simply celebrate the "beauty and kindness of human connections" around the world.
#11 | Apr 2006 | View essay
Emilio Robertson plays in a pick-up truck outside his grandfather's house on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Arlee, MT. Emilio lives off the reservation but visits twice a month to be with his family. The reservation begins nearly 20 miles North of Missoula and ends in the foothills of Glacier National Park.

Lost on Route 93 | Matthew Hayes

U.S. highway Route 93 is another stretch of asphalt in a nation connected by roads, which joins, by a length of 1,860 miles, Alberta, Canada, to Phoenix, Arizona.
#12 | Jan 2005 | View essay
On my bike and at the end of my driveway I saw him as he called out a friend's name who lived on the second floor.

Found | Juli Leonard

Photographer Juli Leonard is always looking. At work, at home, on a bike ride, while playing with her dogs, Leonard is constantly aware and seeking what she thinks of as "spontaneous gifts of light and moment."
Jan 2005 | View essay

Dollars & Sense | Brian Ulrich

After the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, politicians sent the masses back out into the public with a purpose: to shop.
Aug 2004 | View essay
The Raskins, a family of Lubavitch emissaries based in Brooklyn Heights, teach a secular Jew the proper way to shake the lulov and etrog on the Jewish holiday of Sukkos.

The Lubavitch | Carolyn Drake

Located in the heart of America's Hasidic world, in Brooklyn, NY, the Lubavitch are one of several ultra-orthodox groups of Jews spurred off from the original Hasidic movement in Eastern Europe 300 years ago.
#11 | Jun 2004 | View essay
George Walker and Oscar Gonzalez, from left, face off in the ring on Fight Night at A La Carte Event Pavilion in Tampa Bay. Gonzalez emerged victorious.

The Glass Joes | Bob Croslin

The enduring allure of sport around the world is only partially owed to the sum total of goals scored or points received on the playing field. Just like the steak's sizzle, what sells and defines athletics is the surrounding culture the games help create--fans, passion, sweat, heroism, politics, sex, money, and power.
Jun 2004 | View essay

Subway | Nicholas Hegel McClelland

The largest subway system in the United States, New York City's subway stretches for hundreds of miles underneath its crowded streets and through the endless dark corridors of the bowels of the slumber-less city.
Jun 2003 | View essay
Alex relaxes on a hotel bed while Colin and Greg sit on the window sill. So much of being in a band is waiting around - waiting to leave the hotel, waiting to get to the venue, waiting to play. It's interesting how all of our time each day was built around us getting prepared to take the stage for less than 30 minutes of actual music.

Tour Diary: We love that you hate us | Brian Harkin

Indie rock band the Texas Chainsaw Mass Choir took to the highway in the summer and fall of 2003 to promote their raucous brand of hardcore.
Apr 2003 | View essay
The Mutual Musicians Foundation was the site of the black musicians union, before the white and black musicians came together in the 1940s. The lower floor has been hosting a jam session on Friday and Saturday nights since the early twentieth century.

Kansas City Jazz | Travis Hartman

Kansas City--the "Wide Open City"--became the epicenter of the jazz universe during the 1930s and was arguably the wildest town in the nation. After the passage of the prohibition act of 1920, K.C. became host to some of the world's greatest jazz talent, not to mention many of the eras most corrupt politicians and dangerous mobsters, all joining together for a non-stop party of bars, brothels, and gambling dens.
Mar 2003 | View essay
Alex relaxes on a hotel bed while Colin and Greg sit on the window sill. So much of being in a band is waiting around - waiting to leave the hotel, waiting to get to the venue, waiting to play. It's interesting how all of our time each day was built around us getting prepared to take the stage for less than 30 minutes of actual music.

Featured Archive: Tour Diary: We love that you hate us, by Brian Harkin

Indie rock band the Texas Chainsaw Mass Choir took to the highway in the summer and fall of 2003 to promote their raucous brand of hardcore.