“All human beings are hard-wired to look for paradise. For the Swatis, maybe their paradise is mountains, rivers, fruit, family and familiarity.”

Getty Images Grant winner Edwin Koo spent years in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, an area ravaged by humans and nature but nonetheless beloved by its inhabitants. Through his time with the Swatis he came to reconcile his own notions of what paradise means. Koo recently published a book of the work, titled ‘Paradise.’

Read more on New York Times Lens, and in this in-progress blog post that Koo wrote while working on the project.