45°C - Dubai, City of guest workers - Florian Buettner

A work on the everyday lives of immigrant workers on construction sites in Dubai. 85% of Dubai's population are guest workers from low wage countries. The majority of them slaving away at the construction sites of luxury city under the toughest conditions for a pittance.
They live in small and dirty worker camps outside the city, see their family every few years and have no union representation rights.
Florian Buettner

Complete gallery at Florian Buettner website

Bosnia: Tales From The Dark Valley - Ziyah Gafic

I was 12 years old when the Bosnian War started, too young to take part, to fight or to photograph. Growing up in besieged Sarajevo and witnessing the war first hand but not being able to take part left me deeply frustrated. Photography allowed me to be on the other side of the event, turning my frustration into the determination to document the long and painful aftermath of post-war Bosnia. I've focused on a couple of the most painful issues that my homeland faces: the identification of tens of thousands of missing civilians and the return of refugees.

Tales From The Dark Valley is a glimpse into a larger project that VII Network photographer Ziyah Gafic has been working on over the past ten years, Troubled Islam. The project explores troubled societies and countries that have followed a similar pattern of ethnic hatred, war fraternities and genocide. Troubled Islam aims to compare, juxtapose and ultimately understand the circumstances and the political environment that lead a country to its disintegration, and to record the devastating consequences war has on humanity.

Complete gallery at VII website

Watch "Srebrenica genocide 15 years later" video by Ziyah Gafic

About Face - Sage Sohier

Sage Sohier's project About Face is a photographic series on reconstructive surgeries at the Facial Nerve Center at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. Sohier takes a documentary approach to her photographs of the patients before and after the reconstructive surgeries, while containing an element of intimacy between her and the patients.

Sage Sohier has been photographing people in their environments since she graduated from Harvard University in 1976. Her monograph, “Perfectible Worlds” was published in 2007. Other series have included, “Mother,” “Peaceable Kingdom” (people and their animals), “At Home with Themselves: Gay and Lesbian Couples,” and “About Face” (people with facial paralysis). She has been awarded John Simon Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Her work on assignment has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, LIFE, Newsweek, Outside, and Oprah Magazine, and she has taught photography at a number of schools in the Boston area, most recently Harvard University and Massachusetts College of Art. She has exhibited widely, and is represented by Foley Gallery in NY.

Complete Gallery at Sage Sohier website

People of Clouds - Matt Black

In the Mixteca, one of the most impoverished regions in Mexico, migration to the United States has arrived like a storm. In a place so insular that pre-columbian languages like Mixteco, Trique, and Asmuzgos are still spoken more widely than Spanish, and where cars, electricity and indoor plumbing are recent introductions, if they exist at all, northern migration has emptied communities and transformed the lives of those left behind. Some villages have lost as much as 80% of their population to the north and have become little more than ghost towns, home to just a handful of old men, women and the left-behind children of migrants.

In San Miguel Cuevas -- or Nuyuco, Face of the Mountain, in Mixteco -- just 500 people out of 3000 remain. Its streets are largely empty, its fields stand deserted, its century-old way of life lies in shambles as families dissolve to the north, rending the social fabric of this traditional agrarian society. Old women raise grandchildren left behind by their mothers, teenage girls do the work of absent fathers, and old men sit alone, abandoned by their children. "I only think about dying," one 70 year old said, "my only worry is how my funeral will be."

Complete gallery on "Big Picture"

Prison theatre - Sasha Maslow

Here at one of the penal colonies in Kharkiv, Ukraine there is depressing view of endless gray walls with barbwire on the background of even grayer sky. Time has ceased to exist these walls. It's difficult to imagine that people would attempt to seek out something uplifting within the small reality tucked into that of another. But human nature will keep you from dropping your head completely and even when caught in the deepest shaft we can find the strength to seek out traces of light. In the fall of 2005 I documented a group of prisoners who, with the support from one of the local theaters, made an effort to organize a theatrical troupe and stage a play. The play was written by Jonathan Swift long time ago in Ireland and has very little to do with prison reality in Ukraine of 2005. It was extremely moving to observe the inmates mastering acting transitioning from prison slang to calling one another sir and lord, from wearing drab uniforms to donning wigs and bright costumes; as they transform, rehearsing and then performing for the crowd of their inmates and guards.

Sasha Maslov

Complete gallery at Sasha Maslow website

SHE - Guia Besana

Born in 1942 Laura went through surgery in 1963.
Laura was the first man in Italy to undergo surgery in order to become a woman.
I listened to her story trying to fix gestures that could well represent her strong personality.
I discovered an elegant woman, an excellent cook, a wise and creative friend.
All the objects surrounding her tell a story of profound sensibility.
My desire was to bring alive this project through images representing my personal vision of her, her disguises, of fiction and non fiction, showing a fragment of her soul.

Guia Besana

Complete gallery at Guia Besana website