The Ferghana Valley: The Troubled Heart of Asia
The fertile and populous Ferghana Valley in Central Asia is divided among Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan—three countries struggling to establish post-Soviet identities. Jonas Bendiksen's images focus on some of the issues most crucial to the valley and Central Asia, in particular the resurgence and consequential repression of political and religious Islam.

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The Freedom of Movement Train: A Multiethnic Kosovo/a Journey
Hélène Caux's photographs document the daily travel of Serbs, Roma, and Albanians who—in sharp contrast to segregated Kosovar life—ride a train together across Kosovo, visiting friends or returning home. Dubbed the "Freedom of Movement Train," it reflects the continuing tensions among ethnic groups in that war-ravaged region while offering the promise of a more harmonious time.

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Zacas Dunav (Soon is Danube): A Serbian Woman Returns Home
Another view of the Balkan region's recovery from war comes from Jeffrey Ladd. His images personalize this collective struggle, showing a Serbian woman's journey home and her family's attempt to reconcile the old way of life with the new.

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The True Cost of Prison
As open society endures daily challenges in postwar regions around the world, the United States faces its own pressing crises. In New York and Texas, Andrew Lichtenstein examines the immense social, political, and economic repercussions of the U.S. prison complex through the stories of those who know it firsthand.

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No Place for Children: Voices from Juvenile Detention
Steve Liss also critiques the punitive approach of the U.S. prison system, turning his lens on an underresourced, overcrowded juvenile detention center near Laredo, Texas. With his photographs, Liss challenges viewers to see these youths not as a social ill but as a social responsibility.

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Yuyanapaq (To Remember)
In an effort to remember the past, to learn lessons for the future, and to heal the nation's wounds, Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has compiled a visual narrative of the two decades of violence that caused the deaths or forced disappearance of nearly 60,000 Peruvians. Selected from an archive of over 20,000 photographs taken between 1980 and 2000, these images help reconstruct the history of one country's brutal conflict.

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