The photographs in “Between Two Lakes” are taken in the forest separating Lake Wallenpaupak, the largest man-made lake in Pennsylvania, and Lake Lacawac, the southernmost unpolluted glacial lake in North America.

Although they are only 500 acres apart, the lakes could not be more different. Lacawac is a respected center for natural habitat research in the region while Wallenpaupak periodically suffers from E. coli pollution as a result of overdevelopment. These lakes illustrate dramatically different examples of society’s relationship with the environment and serve as a metaphor for the fundamental choice facing human civilization today.

Born 1981 in Philadelphia, Michael Itkoff is a photographer and a Founding Editor of Daylight Magazine. Michael received a BA in Photography from Sarah Lawrence College and has been a recipient of the Howard Chapnick Grant for the Advancement of Photojournalism (2006), a Creative Artists Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Arts Council (2007), and a Puffin Foundation Grant (2008). Charta Books will be publishing Itkoff’s first monograph, “Street Portraits,” in January 2009.