All photos © Stefen Chow.

Stefen Chow’s personal project, “My Neighbour,” focuses on the communities he lives in. For the last two years Chow has been living in a 500 year old Hutong (Alleyway) in Beijing, and many who live there have roots in the neighborhood that span generations and often have connections in some way to the dynastic period of the Forbidden City, China’s former imperial palace. The father of one of his neighbors, for instance, was the vegetarian chef of Puyi, China’s last emperor.

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All images © Brian Steege / ETC Creative

Photographer Brian Steege spent the day photographing the Seed family to create this intimate series of images. Moments of innocence and whimsy are infused with unexpected tension as the Seed children, or “seedlings,” go about their daily lives: An authoritative hand interrupts one daughter’s coloring session, or a rack of knives looms just out of reach as she opens a bag of raisins. With these pictures, Steege manages to simultaneously capture the wonders and dangers of childhood.

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All Photos © Iain McKell. Above: Hazel, 2008.

In his book The New Gypsies (Prestel), photographer Iain McKell presents his portraits of a real group of present-day nomads whose culture is built around ideals of freedom, nature, and simplicity. The movement that gave rise to this culture began in 1986, when a group of post-punk anti-Thatcher protesters headed out of London into the English countryside. McKell followed them to the West Country and watched them over the years as they became a hybrid tribe—what he calls the “new gypsies.”  Also known as “horse-drawn,” they are present-day rural anarchists, living a subversive lifestyle in elaborately decorated horse-drawn caravans. These new gypsies share a desire for sustainability, a love of self-reliance and a disdain for the trappings of contemporary life.

The work featured in The New Gypsies will be on display in an exhibition at the Clic Gallery, 255 Centre Street, New York, New York. The exhibition will run from August 29 through October 2, 2011, with an opening reception on September 15 from 6 to 8pm.

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All images © Mariana Cook

Mariana Cook’s new book Stone Walls: Personal Boundaries examines one of mankind’s earliest and most enduring methods of defining territories – the stone wall. Sculptural and practical, majestic and humble, the dry stone walls showcased in the book capture a fundamental relationship between human beings and the landscape. The book was conceived by Cook, the last protégé of Ansel Adams, at her home on Martha’s Vineyard on the day before Thanksgiving in 2002. After 56 cows strayed through a crumbling section of the stone wall she shares with her neighbor, Cook studied the tumbled wall and was struck by its beauty. With that inspiration, she spent eight years traveling to farms, towns, and temples in Peru, Great Britain, Ireland, the Mediterranean, New England, and Kentucky in pursuit of dry stone walls. The photographs portray the wall in landscape, the wall in abstract form, and the return of rocks to nature. Cook is fascinated with the juxtaposition of stones and geometric composition, as well as with the resonance among walls of different cultures. The walls were photographed by Cook between 2002 and 2010 and were built as early as 3600 B.C. (more…)

© Dustin Aksland

New York City based Dustin Aksland is an emerging editorial and commercial photographer who recently spent five weeks photographing throughout New Delhi, Agra, Varanasi and Mumbai. He says, “I was most drawn to the quieter images I had taken at the beginning of my trip documenting the musicians and laborers working and roaming the harsh but beautiful Rajasthan region of India.” The attached shot was made while camping in the Thar desert. As the sun began to set every evening, musicians, dancers and snake charmers would arrive from nearby villages to perform. These two musicians are brothers who’ve been traveling and playing together since they were kids.  The other performers would leave late in the night when finished but these two brothers camped out with us for 3 nights before heading out to the next village.