This photo was taken in July 2014 from inside the Ducor Palace Hotel, an abandoned five-star hotel in Monrovia, Liberia. The Ducor was once one of the few five-star hotels in all of Sub-Saharan Africa before it closed in 1989 at the onset of Liberia’s civil war.

Expatriates and native Liberians alike continue to visit the empty Ducor for the stunning rooftop views it provides of Monrovia and the Atlantic Ocean. The hotel also overlooks the district of West Point, the largest slum in the city. West Point houses are visible from the Ducor in this photo.

Although the hotel is a mere skeleton of its former grandeur, I found the hotel eerily beautiful because it provides a glimpse of Liberia’s past. The destruction of the hotel mirrors the impact of the civil war on the city surrounding it. Both the West Point neighborhood and the ruined Ducor Hotel are products of Liberia’s civil war, showing the persistent impact of conflict on development.

Contemporary Macau rises above its nestled neighborhoods.

As in most places, the people of Afghanistan want to go to the market and care for their children without incident. In Khost City in 2009, it was common to see military convoys near the market places, men with guns standing around, and people going about their daily lives all at the same time. 

This one of my favorite photographs. i took this photo in the Indian Himalayas while on an expedition to climb Mount Trisul. While on its face, it appears as though the villagers are doing regular agricultural work, the underlying story is more intriguing. the villagers are in fact looking for a rare fungal growth called “keeda jadi," which is scattered among high grounds in the Garhwal Himalayas. the fungus commands a premium in the Chinese market because of its role as an aphrodisiac. 

the fungus is smuggled across the India-Tibetan border into China. I was told that it all began in 2005. Since then, entire villages abandon everything during the harvest months and climb high into the mountains to look for “keeda jadi.” The price it commands allows the villagers to live for almost half a year off a month's work in the himalayas. It is fascinating how the effects of a more affluent china can be seen in a remote corner of the Himalayas.

Taipei City has always been on the front line of the seven-decades-long and still ongoing competition between the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China in the wake of the bloody Chinese Civil War (1945-1949). As Taiwan's political, economic, and cultural center, Taipei is one of the most economically and culturally vibrant cities in Asia. However, its famed morning mists and easy access to many beautiful mountains also portrays an eerie sense of besiege and uncertainty that the city and the whole island state of 23 million people have been constantly confronted in their uphill struggle against the ever-growing giant across the Taiwan Strait.

Here's a pic I took in May 2012 in outside Bangkok. Classic motorcycles were all the rage then, so I bought a rusty 1973 Honda CB350 in the hopes that I could restore it. No one in their right mind would have bought it, but no one in their right mind would ride a motorcycle in Bangkok either. Anyway, I found this old sun-dried raisin of a man who was willing to take a crack at resurrecting the thing. He slept in a shed full of auto parts, and his shop was just a parking lot completely exposed to the sun. As you can imagine, it was hot as hell. All of his tools were manual, most of them improvised. He owed some people money, and these two punks wearing ridiculous ninja masks would pull up on scooters and try to intimidate us from across the street. Like any good mechanic, he could smoke a cigarette without using his hands. Well, I guess he wasn't that good of a mechanic, because eventually he gave up trying to fix the motorbike, and I think it's still in my boss's warehouse. At least I got a good photo out of it.

The stark contrast in Brazilian lifestyles captured from Favela da Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

 This picture was taken during a tour of ten hospitals in five days across all four corners of Rwanda. The trip was to provide follow up medical care for patients who had previously received free cleft lip and cleft palate surgery. While driving through the northern part of the country. It shows young Rwandans working in the tea fields. While it is far away, it is likely that they are mostly women. The photo highlights the importance of agriculture in Rwanda’s economy and in the lives of its citizens.

This photo was taken in July, 2013. The ongoing student protest against the government for free and high quality education had escalated over the past 3 years. Protests often involved violent destructions to public and private facilities by student or non-student protesters (like setting fires in the middle of the roads, knocking down traffic light poles, destroying street signs, breaking into restaurants and shops, etc.). The police sometimes executed special force to confront the protesters, water cannons and tear gases were frequently being used. This photo captures the arrest of violent protesters by the anti-riot police in Santiago, during one of the organized nation-wide protest on July 11, 2013.

This represents a photo essay I worked on that looks at the sex worker industry in Thailand. The photo represents nothing more than what an outsider would see. That was interesting to me, because the system is set up in a way to allow for this type of exploitation, with absolutely zero attempts to hide it from the general public. 

The first thing I noticed in 2013 when I came back to the United States after a brief stint of 2.5 years working throughout Central and South America was that everyone had a smart phone—everyone. Smartphones were around before I left the US, of course, but now at every corner, every bus stop, and every supermarket line, people’s heads were bent down, sucked into their smartphone touchscreens without regard to the world around them.

Antigua, Guatemala, a rather developed town complete with a McDonald’s and a handful of nouvelle cafés for tourists, was, on the other hand, nearly barren of smartphones. Here an indigenous woman, perhaps Kaqchikel, takes a break from selling fruit at the market to make a phone call. She is wearing the typical “traje,” or dress, which is as vibrant in its colors as the fruit so eloquently balanced atop her head. Seeing her in traditional dress, which has been preserved across generations, in juxtaposition with a “modern” technology that has now incidentally become a relic to more developed countries is a very thought provoking scene.

SLUMS OF LIMA, PERU.

Just as football is the national sport in the US, kickboxing shares the same equivalence in Thailand. Seen here are kids no older than 10 years old kickboxing with intense ferocity during a local competition in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

This photo was taken in September, 2013. It was the day of Saint Michael Festival in the capital city, Santo Domingo. This is a festival that is celebrated mostly by the African descendants of the country. People wear bright colors (mainly green and red), go to the churches in the Colonial Zone, and drink hard right outside the churches for an entire day. Music was played out loud in the street, and people danced and drank in the hot breeze. This photo was taken when the smoking “San Miguel” lifted up a baby handed to him by the drunk and unconscious crowd of spectators to won more cheers. The baby however, was apparently scared. The entire celebration was a great reflection of the Dominican culture: warm, happy, and seize the moment.

[Anecdote: the photographer (myself) got pushed so hard by the crowd and almost dropped her camera to take this shot.]

The Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen is a bookstore created inside a 13th-century Catholic church. Opened in 2007, the bookstore has repurposed a long-disused Catholic church in the heart of Maastricht. Before its current incarnation, it had been used as a warehouse and bicycle shed. The three-level bookshelf structure allows book and architecture enthusiasts the opportunity to get a new perspective on the upper reaches of a church.

Welcome to რთველი (rtveli), the traditional vintage and harvest holiday that takes place each autumn in the country of Georgia. Georgians are very proud of their wine heritage, and rtveli is a tradition that dates back to ancient times. Each year, family and friends spend multiple days clipping grapes from the vine, all the while anticipating the great feast (or supra) that will take place at the day’s end. This photo was taken during my time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tsinandali, a village in the wine-growing region of Kakheti. During both years of my service, I went to my host family’s vineyard to help with the harvest and to learn the important place that viticulture holds in Georgian’s hearts and minds. The vine is closely linked to the Georgian culture as feasting and hospitality are central to the Georgian identity.