Photographer Guy Calaf discovered Pakistan’s transgender community, or hijras, while working on an assignment about heroin addiction in Punjab. Although he wouldn’t necessarily call visiting hijras common practice, they have an established presence in South Asia.

For decades, communities along the industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans have worried that toxic emissions were harming their health. It’s a fear that has earned the region the nickname “Cancer Alley.” Richard Misrach began photographing this stretch of the Mississippi River in 1998.

At a young age, Ilaria Di Biagio learned her little sister was more fragile than other children. Injuries came easily, and her body was slow to heal. She was eventually diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a rare tissue disorder that causes her to have hyperelastic skin and flexible joints.

A Pentecostal drug rehabilitation home about two hours outside of Moscow houses people ready for release from their addictions. Photographer Mae Ryan spent two days there following Irina Pavlova, a resident who had used “krokodile,” a homemade drug with effects similar to heroin.

Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey teamed up with his son to create an interactive book that captures the vibrant energy of Rio de Janeiro. Harvey considers the city the “perfect Shakespeare stage.” And on that stage, he tells a personal story embedded in a journalistic narrative.

Through trial and error, Matthew Brandt found ways to incorporate the subject of his photographs into their development. He submerges his images in lake water, prints on the bark of trees and uses emulsion from honeybees.

Swedish photographer Anders Petersen moved to London for a month last year and turned his camera to the city’s famous Soho district, a transformed area once known for its sex shops and nightlife. “I think it is even more friendly today and perhaps more open for everyone,” he said.

In 2010, photographer Maxim Dondyuk met a man with tuberculosis of the bowels in Ukraine. "A week later, I was with him in the last hours of his life. He could not move and talk; his body was like a skeleton covered with skin," he said. A Ukrainian native, Dondyuk has documented the issue in two regions.