All photos © Michael Hanson. Above: Paul Glowaski, the director of the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz, CA, stands in a field at sunset.

People have always grown food in urban spaces—on windowsills and sidewalks, and in backyards and neighborhood parks—but today, urban farmers are leading an environmental and social movement with intent to transform our national food system. To explore this agricultural renaissance, brothers David and Michael Hanson and urban farmer Edwin Marty document twelve successful urban farm programs, from an alternative school for girls in Detroit, to a backyard food swap in New Orleans, to a restaurant supply garden on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Each essay offers practical advice for budding farmers, such as composting and keeping livestock in the city, decontaminating toxic soil, even changing zoning laws.

For seven weeks, David, Michael, and videographer, Charlie Hoxie, traveled the country in a short school bus powered by veggie grease (and a minivan after too many breakdowns delayed the production). The trio slept in empty lots overlooking the Pacific Ocean, mall parking lots, and alongside the very farms they were documenting.The images and stories to come out of these farms show that America’s urban landscape is rich with opportunity for fresh local food. Hanson’s book, Breaking Through Concrete : Building an Urban Farm Revival, published by University of California Press, was recently released.

-courtesy Michael Hanson.

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All Photos © Michael Itkoff.

This series by Michael Itkoff was made within five-hundred acres situated between two lakes in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Itkoff says, “To develop a relationship with a specific place, with a piece of land, with a view, with local trees and animals is a profound experience that unfolds over time. Although I have lived in many different places over the years I have managed to return to the same cabin in Pennsylvania for most of my life.”

Michael Itkoff is based between New York City and North Carolina.

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All photos © Jason Houston.

These still images are from the filming of Picture the Leviathan, a documentary film by Jason Houston and Hal Clifford scheduled for completion in May 2012. Picture the Leviathan shows the passion and effort James Prosek puts into making his extraordinary watercolor portraits. The film’s theme—that art makes a difference—is supported by three legs: The quest inherent in Prosek’s journeys; the making of the art; and Prosek’s deeply humble, almost mystical relationship to other species.

Prosek paints in the tradition of 19th-century naturalists who catalogued the world as it was discovered—but he paints creatures that are vanishing. It’s a truism that in order to care for something you first must know it. And we don’t know the once-dominant, majestic creatures of the Atlantic, some of which humans are fishing toward extinction. Facts about the oceans’ decline pile up like sand, with little effect on human behavior. This is where art comes in. Prosek is on a quest to paint approximately 40 Atlantic fish species that are significant to humans—and paint them from life, full-size, after seeing them [in their natural habitat]. Nobody has ever tried to do this—after all, it’s challenging to observe some of these fish in [nature]. His quest takes him stalking swordfish off Nova Scotia; night fishing for deep-water cod; to the Bahamas for giant grouper; to the Cape Verde Islands to see a 900-pound blue marlin. He believes he must be there—right there—when a true, live, leviathan rises from the deep.

The film is intended to help, in a small way, shift the culture by altering the viewer’s perception of our relationship to fish and oceans. Because Picture the Leviathan is part of a larger media suite—the film documents the creation of a body of art that will form the basis for a 2012 book and art exhibit—it will both expand upon and amplify James’s work and that work’s implicit messages about our relationship to the ocean and its megafauna.

— Text courtesy of Jason Houston.

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All Photos © Alyson Aliano

Alyson Aliano’s project “Real Mother” explores what it means to be a mother. She says, “I started the moms project when I was a stepmother to twins. People would continually ask, ‘Aren’t you going to have children? Don’t you want to have your own children? When are you going to have your own children?’ The implication was that as a stepparent, I wasn’t a ‘real’ parent. At the time, I did all the things ‘real’ parents did: I took the kids to the doctor, went to soccer games, organized play-dates, birthday parties, summer camp and saved for college. My experience was a roller coaster ride: amazing, scary and exhilarating. I began to think about what parenting and motherhood were all about. I looked to other women to share their experiences and I photographed all types of moms: biological, step, lesbian and adoptive mothers. These women shared their hopes, fears, questions and experiences with me.”

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© Henry Jacobson. Musicians gather at an impromptu jam around a bonfire at Storyhill Music Festival in northern Minnesota.

Photographers and filmmakers Sara Terry (director) and Henry Jacobson (cinematographer) are currently at work on a feature length documentary, FOLK, that follows several singer-songwriters as they travel the United States, sharing their music with fans and fellow musicians. The film, which is currently in post-production, is “part music documentary and part road trip movie,” Terry writes in a description of the film. “FOLK lets our characters’ lives and their songs do what singer-songwriters have always done: amplify the themes that resonate across our cultural landscape—whether it’s re-defining success in the face of failure, trying to find wholeness in an increasingly fragmented world, or struggling to make sense of the trials and triumphs that make us all so human.”

This is the second documentary from Terry and Jacobson. Their award-winning first film, Fambul Tok, told the story of a grassroots organization promoting healing and reconciliation in post-conflict Sierra Leone.

Related: To Forgive, Not Forget: Sara Terry’s New Film Fambul Tok