Laia Abril had long been shooting projects about gender and sexuality when she stumbled into a concept she'd never before heard of: asexuality – people who feel no sexual attraction to others. To tell their stories, Abril interviewed each person and created an online multimedia project about their perspectives.

In 2009 and 2010, photographer Tadej Znidarcic posed gay Ugandans in front of a crumbling wall, their backs to his camera. When Znidarcic revisited his subjects this year, much had changed. Many of the subjects chose to face the camera – and a society that had criminalized their sexual orientation.

Adam Reign started photographing the vogue dance scene in Harlem last year. He found that ballroom culture is more than expressive dancing, fashion and music – it’s a lifestyle. And with roots tracing back to New York’s gay and transgender black and Hispanic community, it’s also a haven for those who are often ostracized.

The Chiang Mai Cabaret show is the only drag cabaret in the city of the same name in northern Thailand. Photographer Rachel Dennis captured the "kathoeys," transgenders who are considered the "third gender," prepping backstage and performing onstage.

The annual Pride Photo Award features winners in four categories – documentary; gender, picturing people with a gender identity different from male/female stereotypes; open, images without restrictions that didn’t fit into the other categories; and extremely normal, which portrayed everyday people and not stereotypes.

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.

Chicago, a struggling New York musician in his mid-30s, was born female but now embraces the trans label. Since he was a teenager, he has been searching for his place in a world that wants people to be strictly male or female. Photographer Raymond McCrea Jones documents his journey.