For five years, from 2010-2015, British photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews traveled throughout this part of the world, chronicling its people, politics, and geography. Her photos detail not only the elements of its famous geology—which include oil and uranium—but also the practices that connect residents to a land they see as by turns mystical, practical, religious, and therapeutic. In her photos, Azeris seek healing by sitting in baths of crude oil in the town of Naftalan, Azerbaijan, while two Kazakh sisters walk through a field of rock towards an underground mosque.

Published by Aperture and Peabody Museum Press, and accompanied by exhibitions at Aperture Gallery in New York and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, Mathews’ Caspian: The Elements offers a disquieting and kaleidoscopic look at human life in a region of the world most often seen through the lens of natural resources and geopolitics.

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