Photographer Tina Remiz is from Latvia, but both her parents were born in Russia. She generally felt part of both the Latvian and Russian communities, but sometimes there was a cultural barrier with Latvians, she said. Remiz explores the Russian community in Latvia in her project "Krievi."

Historically, each oblast, or province, in Russia has psychiatric facilities situated away from the cities, in rural areas. Elat’ma, in the Ryazan Oblast region of Russia, is unique in that it functions as a town for mentally disabled people. It hosts six facilities, one for each developmental stage of a person’s life from birth to death.

On the other side of the mountains from the Russian town of Sochi, where the Olympic flame will be lighted next year, a war is being waged. From the Caucasus' impenetrable forests and mountains, Islamist rebels are engaged in a struggle for independence from Russia.

Photograper Tomer Ifrah arrived in Russia’s capital in the middle of winter and discovered the Moscow metro, which intrigued him because it was the only place in the city where all ages and stature of people in the same area.

Photographer Eric Michael Johnson sought to photograph a medical facility catering to the veterans and families of the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya in Russia, still receiving treatment decade after the initial conflict. After negotiating with Russia’s government to gain access, he photographed in a single day.

Photographer Colin Delfosse went to the remote Russian city of Murmansk to spend a month following naval cadets learning the traditional basics of naval navigation, with half of that time spent aboard one of the largest sail-driven ships in the world.

Their traveling name is “The Light of the Little Stars,” a circus troupe of “little people” – people affected by dwarfism. Their small stature does not affect their big star status, said photographer Tatiana Ilina, who took pictures of the performers as they traveled through Russia.

So many women have come to work in Ivanovo, Russia, that it has been dubbed the “city of brides.” For a year, student photographer Alena Zhandarova used social media to find women living in her hometown, the country’s once-textile capital.