Photographer Joseph Rodriguez grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and as a boy he watched the men in his family go in and out of prison. There were very few support programs for ex-felons at the time, and Rodriguez witnessed the difficulty his relatives had adjusting to life on the outside.

I have always admired companion animals, and several years ago I decided to volunteer at a shelter in New York City. By law the animals there had to be killed if they were not adopted within a short period of time. So I started taking photographs of the animals and posting them on social media. I wanted to convey their unique personalities as well as their loneliness and fear. Almost immediately the adoption rate at the shelter increased.

In 2015 more than a million refugees came to Europe seeking asylum. Most were fleeing the fighting in Syria and Iraq or escaping Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Bringing only what they could carry, many crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece before continuing on to wealthier countries such as Germany and Sweden.

Amlan Sanyal took these photographs at a road-construction site on the outskirts of his hometown of Siliguri in West Bengal, India, near the foothills of the Himalayas. He says the workers, mostly migrants from remote villages, are often exposed to hazardous materials and run an increased risk of respiratory problems, dermatitis, gastrointestinal diseases, and other disorders.

The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.

— Henry Beston

Photographer Marc Toso has been exploring remote areas of the Southwest ever since he left Pennsylvania to go to college in New Mexico more than two decades ago. The photographs on these pages are the result of countless hours he has spent roaming the desert after dark with only a headlamp or the moon to light his way.

Trained as a sculptor, Alain Laboile first picked up a camera to take pictures of his whimsical sculptures of animals and insects, but after the birth of his fifth child, he began to focus the lens on his growing family at home. He and his wife, Anne, now have six children — four girls and two boys — and are raising them in a remote region of France.

Seven years ago, when Tytia Habing first became pregnant, she secretly hoped for a girl. She got a boy instead, and ever since, she says, her life has been “filled with dirt, broken toys, shoes full of sand, sticks, scraped knees, cut-up cardboard boxes, mud, toy guns, dinky cars, and a never-ending sense of amazement at this foreign little creature I brought into the world.”

For the last eight years, Michael Dvorak has photographed people in his home state of Minnesota. Taken at county fairs, parades, and on the streets in and around Minneapolis, the images are part of a series he calls “Close to Home.”

“It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer