When we talk about life in the countryside, a wide variety of images appear before our inner eye, images that are shaped just as much by our own experiences as by media portrayals. Rural life prophesies village community, rural idyll, but also barren province. For some it is the promise of alternative life, for others the threat of migration and infrastructural disintegration. The publication Über Leben am Land (On Living in the Countryside) analyzes rural lifeworlds in Europe and the USA and shows how diverse the backgrounds of experience and ways of looking at things are that constitute our idea of the countryside. Twenty photo artists approach the different faces and facets of the province in documentary, staged, and sometimes very personal ways. Texts by Verena Kaspar-Eisert, Elke Rauth, and Peter Zawrel provide an in-depth look at the multi-layered imagery of the countryside and take stock of urban-rural relations.