For about seven years photographer Chad A. Stevens has been working on a documentary on mountaintop removal, a coal excavation technique used primarily in the Appalachia mining region. As his project progressed, Stevens realized how complicated the situation is, especially for the residents.

For over a year, photographer McNair Evans has ridden Amtrak lines across the United States on 15-day passes to capture stories of where people are going, what they hope to find and what they left behind. The stories sucked him in almost instantly.

Whenever photographer Paul McDonough had enough time and money to get out of the city in the ’70s and ’80s, the New Yorker would pack his camera bag and drive. He’d have Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” in his back pocket and wander until his money ran out, he said.

At the heart of LaToya Ruby Frazier’s work is a deep interest in the complex relationship between mother and daughter, she says. Set in Braddock, Pennsylvania, the former steel mill town where Frazier was born and raised, her photographs portray a struggling city and its effect on those who live in its shadow.

Dutch photojournalist Kadir van Lohuizen discovered an unlikely place during his yearlong journey through the Americas. War refugees from Iraq have created a home away from home near the U.S.-Mexico border, in El Cajon, California, more than 7,700 miles from their motherland. It’s called “Little Baghdad.”

Photographer Raymond McCrea Jones says the first 36 hours of life for new Army recruits can best be described using a common military refrain: shock and awe. Since February 19, he has been following a group of recruits undergoing basic combat training at Fort Benning, an Army post outside Columbus, Georgia.

Photographer Sara Forrest started documenting Heather Hardy’s daily routine last year. The 31-year-old boxer has never lost a professional fight, but she knows what it’s like to get knocked down. When Superstorm Sandy hit New York in October, Hardy was still recovering from losing her home in a fire a few months earlier.

25 years ago, Billy Howard took portraits of people with HIV/AIDS at their homes around the U.S., then gave them a print and asked them to write what it was like to live with this disease. Some took months to get it back to Howard. One man took a year. He told Howard it was because it felt like he was writing his will.