Transnistria, the no-man’s land between the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, rarely makes it into the news. With the exception of the short war between 1990 and 1992, when the country was fighting for independence only to later sink back into east block oblivion. It is precisely these kind of isolated places that interest the French photographer Cédric Viollet, who has already been on photographic exploration trips to Lesotho and Hong Kong.

In Elliot Ross’s series, Plainsmen, we are called to the interior American West—a place which, from an outsider’s perspective, is generally romanticized and oversimplified. The region is too often ignored unless it is politically convenient, and it is sometimes flippantly referred to as flyover country. As a person who grew up in rural Colorado, Ross understands the complexities faced by residents in this part of the country. Though the project is sequenced with photographs of people and places, our awareness is continuously being redirected toward the younger generation. They embody the heritage and lifestyle of their parents and connote values typically associated with rural American communities, including honesty and hard work. Despite this, their futures remain uncertain due to growing social and economic distress. Ross poignantly brings this dilemma to our attention and asks us to consider the future of the West and its residents—not the West of mythology, but that of fragile reality.

In Elliot Ross’s series, Plainsmen, we are called to the interior American West—a place which, from an outsider’s perspective, is generally romanticized and oversimplified. The region is too often ignored unless it is politically convenient, and it is sometimes flippantly referred to as flyover country. As a person who grew up in rural Colorado, Ross understands the complexities faced by residents in this part of the country. Though the project is sequenced with photographs of people and places, our awareness is continuously being redirected toward the younger generation. They embody the heritage and lifestyle of their parents and connote values typically associated with rural American communities, including honesty and hard work. Despite this, their futures remain uncertain due to growing social and economic distress. Ross poignantly brings this dilemma to our attention and asks us to consider the future of the West and its residents—not the West of mythology, but that of fragile reality.

Of all the images that the photographer Clémentine Schneidermann and the art director Charlotte James have made of (and with) children in South Wales, few show interior scenes. Here is one, in which, amid the gloom and clatter of a community center, two figures are brightly lit. A young girl with blond ringlets gives the camera a bored glare, while a red-haired boy, wearing a luxe hillock of green fake fur, flashes us his newly augmented fingernails. Beside his sullen companion, the boy looks like a prepubescent night-club impresario, or a glamorous tween art star. In a photographic project that invites children to style and invent themselves, he might be the most daring of all. Elsewhere, you’ll spot him in platform boots and off-the-shoulder brown velour, his face full of cheek, and his cigarette delicately plied.

For half a decade, Fred Ramos has photographed the longstanding political, social and environmental crises that are driving migration in the region.

The photographer Argus Paul Estabrook remembers his mother calling him from the hospital, and he remembers flying from Seoul to be with his family in the United States. But much of his father’s battle with pancreatic cancer remains a blur. By the time he was diagnosed, it had already reached Stage 4, and when it was all said and done, Estabrook‘s father would live for only three more weeks. “Time was really jumbled like that one drawer where nothing is in the right place,” the photographer admits. “Memories become fractured and mixed together.”

An artistic residence in Norway (Halsnoy Cloister, 2013) ignites a passion with the North. Iceland, then Scandinavia further fuels the flame, revealing a personal confrontation with an endless space, a passionate and brutal encounter.

Playing with light and shadow, José Sarmento Matos captures barbecues and commuters in ways that echo Caravaggio’s oil paintings.

The photographer Al Thompson arrived in the United States as a teen-ager from Jamaica, in 1996, to join his mother in Spring Valley, a New York City suburb situated in Rockland County. “What was surprising to me was how big everything was,” Thompson told me recently, about visiting shops and stores during his first days in his new home. Buying CDs, making cassettes, being grounded for the first time, and playing soccer and basketball in Spring Valley Memorial Park—a focal point of the community, where he encountered a medley of “languages, accents, and inflections”—were the activities that initiated him into American teen-age life. At the time, Rockland County was one of the most diverse places in the country, and host to the largest Haitian population outside of the Miami area—Haitian Presidents have made it a point to visit this “Little Haiti” during diplomatic missions in the U.S.

It Is A Miracle We Are Standing Here. The title of the exhibition currently hanging at the International Center for Photography speaks to the crisis of modern day social fabrics, art making, and political climate. When For Freedoms and I began discussing the creation of this show, and how we could use it as a platform to continue their mission of promoting work and artists creating evocative, politically, and personally motivated work, I immediately saw the connections between their mission and that of the Developer series here on Lenscratch.

On October 7, 2018, the photographer Patrick D. Pagnano died, leaving behind a treasury of classic American street photography and documentary work made over more than 50 years.

Tracy L Chandler’s compelling and poignant series Edge Dwellers is photography at it’s best. The work speaks to the power of the medium as a vehicle for baring witness, for understanding and contemplating humanity, and for providing connection to unseen populations. Tracy’s large format capture of marginalized individuals that make their home on the edges of the California coast reveals a particular community that is often ignored and misunderstood, as they struggle with the affects of addition and abuse. A large part of her practice is connecting to her subjects in a profound way, slowing down her photography and making portraits as a collaborative experience.

In 1969, Graciela Iturbide was enrolled in the prestigious University Center for Film Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, with the dream of becoming a film director — until she began studying with Manuel Álvarez Bravo, the nation’s foremost photographer.

After his father’s death, the photographer Mohamed Altoum went on a journey to understand what it means to be Nubian.

Matt Black’s ongoing project The Geography of Poverty, looks at designated “poverty areas” — with poverty rates of above 20 per cent as defined by the US census—and examines the conditions of powerlessness, prejudice, and pragmatism among America’s poor. Having travelled 100,000 miles across 46 American states—and Puerto Rico—he has found that, rather than being anomalies, these communities are woven into the fabric of the country, as much a reality as the so-called American Dream.

Mexico’s murder rate went up 16% in the first half of 2018, a grim statistic that suggested this year would be the bloodiest in the country’s history. Time magazine approximated that someone was killed every 15 minutes in May. Where I live in Mexico has the reputation of being a safe haven. In travel around the country, I have seldom been in danger, yet I worry about personal safety. Reconciling my daily life with the headlines I see in the “prensa amarilla” leads to thoughts that I’m living in a fantastical bubble while a war rages closer than I want to believe.

On our final day of posts for Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South, we feature a selection of the co-curators Mark Sloan and Mark Long’s essay on emplacing the new south. I think that there is no better text to summarize the exploration of Southern identity and culture that we’ve featured throughout the week, so without further adieu…

In addition to an amazing curation of Southern photography and writing, Southbound also features an incredible interactive map depicting concentrations of everything from African Americans to chickens, confederate symbols to field crops, as well as an “Index of Southernness”. This index was created by fusing the other maps presented, showcasing “classic regional geographic patterns of core, domain, and sphere, where places that read as most Southern are readily identifiable.” According to the curators, “In representing places where southerness is most intense, the Index reveals the resilience of the region. By also showing how southerness transitions across space, the map weaves a rich regional tapestry.”