All Photos © Colleen Mullins.

After Katrina, the urban forest of New Orleans lay decimated. But it is not that damage on which my photographs gaze, but on the damage at the hands of man, that has followed. This particular canopy degradation, added to the 70% loss from the ravage of the storm, is setting the stage for an already palpable loss that even with massive replanting efforts, is leaving a scar on the area that will not heal for generations.

The site of the most over-imaged disaster in modern history has become an interesting case study of our strange relationship with nature as urban dwellers. We seem to have a cultural belief that if it is an Eden we planted, we have eminent domain over the territory it occupies. While the deformities can sometimes be comical, the impact of this loss will challenge city residents returning home for years to come. Absent street signs, and often the houses themselves, these trees have frequently been the only signifiers to tell me that I’ve returned to a site to photograph. Imagine if the tree was not a marker for a photograph, but a marker for home.

Nearly 1/4 of forestland in the United States exists in urban settings today. By 2058 there will be another 8.1% increase (roughly the size of Montana) in areas classified as “urban” that were formerly classified as “rural”. I have become fascinated by both reality and nostalgic iconography of the wild and the cultivated Edens we invent, preserve, or otherwise occupy. -Colleen Mullins

To see more of Mullins’ work click here.

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All Photos © Nathan Harger/Hasted Kraeutler. Untitled (Factory Wall 13), Elizabeth, NJ, 2009.

Photographer Nathan Harger’s  stark images of architectural and urban infrastructure are on view at Hasted Kraeutler in New York until January 29, 2011. He says these days, taking photos of subjects like these can be tricky.  “In the past eight months I’ve been stopped by 8 security guards, 5 law officers and detained once by Homeland Security,” Harger says.

He’s learned to be prepared. “The best thing you can do is carry around some form of identification and any publication you were in. If you don’t have that, bring a portfolio with examples of your work. Also have your own business cards and the business cards of the gallery that represents you, photo agent or your employer so they can call to verify who you are.”

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All Photos © Anne Berry. Above: Baboon in Window (Moscow).

The photograph that started Anne Berry’s Menagerie series was Singe Noir, a photograph of a Black Monkey that Berry took while visiting the Ménagerie in Paris, “I was captivated by the atmosphere of this 18th Century zoo and also by the magnetism of the monkey’s silent but powerful communication”. Inspired by this experience, Anne travels to small, archaic zoos, where she spends hours observing the animals she photographs. The photographs in this series come mainly from zoos in France, Germany, Russia, and the Netherlands. To see more of Berry’s work click here.

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© Jake Stangel. Mt. Hood, Oregon.

Every summer, thousands of kids fly in from all over the world to ride their snowboard at High Cascade Snowboard Camp, which operates on a glacier at the top of Mount Hood, Oregon. It’s one of a small handful of glaciers that are ridable year-round. High Cascade builds and manages a huge snowboard park- a combination of jumps, rails, and halfpipes- that hundreds of campers and pro riders riders run through every day. Since the slushy snow is constantly melting and getting pushed around by riders, the camp employs a team of “diggers” to reshape the park features all day long. I took this shot of the High Cascade’s digger crew shaping the camp’s halfpipe in high noon heat, while the campers were off eating lunch. – Jake Stangel

To see more of Stangel’s work click here.

© Kamran Khan

Kamran Khan suffers for his art at the feet of his feline foe. “Cheezburger Fight 3″ is part of Khan’s self-portrait series, “Life Begins at 2 A.M.” More images from this series can be seen in the Pix Digital Imaging Contest 2010 online gallery.