Counterculture

Ancestors

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:45 -0400

Some African harmonic traditions and histories may have been redacted, but they’re not lost. In New Orleans, specifically among the tribes, they made sure to hold on to those histories and the skeleton keys of those expressions.

Expats

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Rhonda tended to take in people—and cats, Jessica said. Spending about $150 of her monthly Social Security check on cat food, in addition to supporting her meth habit, had left her broke most of the time.

A Thousand Words

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

The Fourth Estate

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:45 -0500

I don’t believe we’re confined to the media business models that we know. As the information landscape evolves, there will still be journalism about what is happening now, and that will help people in the future who are trying to make sense of it. This work has value.

Nicknames

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Get to know Boxcar Betty, Stick Dick, Lali, and the Cajun Asian

A Thousand Words

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0500

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Become a Friend of The Sun

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Putting this magazine together has remained a profoundly human endeavor, the work of many hands, even as the media landscape has become more automated.

Graffiti

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A tag on a dumpster, poetry in an outhouse, Viking runes in an underground tomb

Rude and Raw

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

If you were around then, you probably blinked and missed Rude and Raw. Not many people noticed when they came on the scene, and even fewer paid attention when they left. They weren’t easily categorized. They weren’t hard rock or power pop, and veered off several exits short of punk. They probably had people telling them they should be more of this or less of that, but if so, they didn’t heed any of it. They seemed caught in this never-ending state of becoming, trying to figure things out as they went, as strange and undefinable to themselves as they were to others.

Getting Dressed

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Sleeping in uniform, layering against the cold, wearing your spouse’s jeans

The Wall of Death

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

The Wall of Death is a rare piece of Americana, a vintage live-action show featuring a silo-shaped wooden cylinder thirty feet in diameter. Inside this motordrome, daredevils on motorcycles ride a fourteen-foot wall.

Records

Fri, 30 May 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A favorite album, a fastest time, a handwritten note about an adoption

Wandering on the Margins

andyhann.01@gmail.com — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:00:00 -0400

From 2017 to 2020 I took portraits of interesting characters on the streets of Venice Beach, Long Beach, Hollywood, and Anaheim, California. The work was motivated by my love of the human face and fascination with people who, for one reason or another, don’t blend in: street performers, members of cosplay subcultures, people experiencing homelessness, individuals dealing with substance abuse disorders. I offered each person lunch money in exchange for their picture. For the background I used a portable white backdrop—Richard Avedon–style. The nontraditional composition is an extension of the series title, a way of portraying a group of people who often occupy our peripheral field of vision. I also wanted to explore the human tendency to evaluate and even judge others based on limited information.

—Andy Hann

Riverside

brody@soultrue.org — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0500

Once we had settled into the new post-Helene normal, I felt called to venture into Asheville’s beloved River Arts District to document the storm’s aftermath. I wanted to honor the artisans, artists, and small-business owners who have poured their souls into this vibrant, creative community. The scale of the devastation and the sheer power of wind and water and mud were almost beyond comprehension.

Thoreau and Me

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 12:00:00 -0400

Thoreau was the same sort of hippie I am. The main difference between us is that I do not want my writing to be as absolutely sexless as his. I want to be a Thoreauvian capable of lust.

To the Bone

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 -0400

“To the Bone” is an ongoing photography project documenting daily life and work on a small family farm in the Hudson Valley. Emily, a single mother, manages their small farm with the help of her children. My intention is to explore the strength, dignity and love that keeps them deeply connected as a family, to each other and to their unique way of life on the farm.

Down in the Valley

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0400

Once I saw the development of new technology in class terms—how a particular kind of technology gives one group of people power over another—it started to feel more sinister.

A Thousand Words

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 01:00:00 -0400

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

La Diáspora

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 05:00:00 -0500

People of sub-Saharan African descent have lived in what is today Mexico since the early days of Spanish colonization. . . . Today there are only a handful of communities left with large Black Mexican populations. The Costa Chica, the coastal region of southern Guerrero and northern Oaxaca, boasts the greatest number. . . . My experience in Juárez and the relative scarcity of information about Mexico’s Black communities made me curious to visit the Costa Chica myself. So a few years later I did. I ended up staying there for six months, forming friendships and documenting the residents’ daily life. This is a selection of photos from my time there.

The Salmonella Special

Tue, 31 Oct 2023 04:10:00 -0400

In twelve months I hadn’t set foot in a supermarket, hadn’t compared the prices of two brands of bread, hadn’t stood in a checkout line to buy anything, not even a pack of Tic Tacs. Everything I ate had been thrown away. Everything I ate, I’d found first.

No Small Wonder

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 04:00:00 -0400

Emotions aren’t discrete bubbles. They are blending into each other all the time. You might be feeling awe and wonder at the miracle of life, and also realizing that we all die, which perhaps moves you closer to terror. In our work we try to find what’s true in it all.

Open Ears

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 04:00:00 -0400

It wouldn’t surprise me if people looked back in twenty or thirty years and said, “This was the Bad Bunny era” — that those Spanish-language musicians have the same kind of influence today as the hip-hop pioneers and the punk pioneers did in the 1970s.

From Somebody To Nobody To . . .

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 04:00:00 -0400

I think that any kind of myth you have about what you think is happening is too small and heady for what really is. What really is, is that this is the manifestation of God. And it’s all just fine. It’s horrible but fine. I mean fine with all of its horror.

He Arrived In A Hollowed-Out Studebaker Lark

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 04:10:00 -0400

We also had eyes for his car. You had to give up / all possessions to live here, George fine with that — / he’d just spent two cross-country months in the thing, / its front bucket seat removed for sleeping purposes — / and now an actual Lark was our newest town-runner.

Salt Of The Earth

Tue, 19 Jan 2021 05:00:00 -0500

I was drawn to quite the opposite: curiosities, anachronisms, misfits, innocents, and angels. They quickly became my family. They gave me something my blood relatives could not, something fresh and immediate, accepting and nonjudgmental.

Dark Corners

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 16:00:00 -0400

When COVID-19 hit, Dr. Anthony Fauci was portrayed on the Right as a deep-state villain, one of these “elitists” who are trying to tell “us” how to live in Middle America.

Beneath Our Feet

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 00:00:00 -0400

Well, if the world handed me strangeness, then I’d take whatever advantage I could, which meant walking right down the middle of a street usually clogged with traffic. There was luxury in the freedom to roam as I pleased.

Rubbish

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Eventually, when it was clear that things could not go on as they were, and it was obvious to everyone that matters were now completely out of hand, that something had to be done, we had a meeting in the town hall, all of us crowded in.

December 2017

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 -0500

Featuring Rabbi Michael Lerner, Barbara Kingsolver, Sister Helen Prejean, Sy Safransky, and more.

October 2017

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 00:00:00 -0400

Featuring Pramila Jayapal, Ralph Nader, Sister Helen Prejean, Sy Safransky, Tim Wise, and more.