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There are few debates in the United States as hotly torn apart as immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2005, three friends banded together to cast a fresh look at this red button topic.

This creative trio didn't want to proselytize or argue or blast off emails to voters. They wanted to capture the daily experience of the Mexican migrants attempting to enter the U.S. illegally and the American Minutemen attempting to spot and report them.

Cameras were produced. Envelopes were self-addressed and stamped. The small group set off to find border crossers and border watchers willing to photograph their experiences along the remote stretch of land that connects the U.S. to its southern neighbor. Eventually, a name was decided upon: the Border Film Project.

Three years, 73 cameras, and nearly 2,000 photos later, The Border Film Project boasts a moving collection of images from both sides of this fractious issue.

We wrote about the endeavor years ago. Recently, we emailed the project's founders, Rudy Adler, Victoria Criado, and Brett Huneycutt, to see how things are going:

Hey, guys. Your background page details how you distribute cameras to migrants and Minutemen. How did the two groups react, initially, to the idea? Tell us how you went about it.

Surprisingly, the vast majority of migrants we approached were receptive to the project. Granted, many of the 500 migrants that received cameras may have been just fishing for a free camera, but in the end, the migrants that truly believed in the project where the ones that took the best photos. Many migrants expressed a profound desire to show American citizens what they had to endure to arrive in the United States Read the full profile...

"Each day the United States throws away
enough trash to fill 63,000 garbage trucks."
—The Cass County Solid Waste Management District

It all began on July 16, 2007, when one man decided he'd had enough. "You can't walk down a single street in New York City without the sight and smell of trash, rubbish, yesterday's news, and last night's garbage," he may have said to himself. "Everyone tosses things away: the fashionable, the leisure class, the chronically thirsty. What we need is the documentarist, a troubadour, perhaps, who can help us regard what we waste and reconsider what we discard in a whole new light. We will never look at last night's garbage in the same way."

A man's eyes may be the window to his soul, but his flip-flops say more about what he does during the day. With "The Shoe Project," Norwegian photographer and filmmaker Ellen Ugelstad presents a cheerful portrait series of San Francisco citizens and their footwear. Grandpa Collins dons gleaming white sneakers. Carpenter Bill laces on impressively worn work boots. And Ayu, a woodcut artist, slips lime green socks in to her patent leather Mary Janes. A self-described "superstudent" laughs while perfectly turned out in a Man of Steel T-shirt and platform suede boots, and a white-bearded nudist stands discretely in worn brown flip flops. Let those toes breathe some air.

While you're here, be sure to check out Ellen Ugelstad's other series. Her "Outside (in America)" chronology offers a quirky, fascinating view of the denizens, shop windows, and billboards of the U.S.A. "One View" presents abstracted, often light-suffused, images of ceilings, skies, and windows.