(photo by Nancy Pastor/The Washington Times) Alexandria salutes a USO Weekend" with live music and entertainment, Alexandria, VA. Saturday, July 17, 2004.
(photo by Michelle Frankfurter) 2004
(photo by Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) Shekita McCallister, 16, sports earrings with the name of her dead 2-year-old brother, September, 18, 2006. She has joined the Peaceoholics, an organization aimed at quelling violence in Washington, D.C.
(photo by Maisie Crow/Patuxent Publishing Company) Marie Haynie naps while waiting for her hair to dry at Renee’s Hair Salon in Arbutus, Maryland, May 30, 2007. “They eat, sleep and talk under the dryer,” hairdresser Fran Shanken said.
(photo by Melissa Golden) A young girl is seen through a new electric car during city workers appreciation day in Athens, Ga. where workers from the city's various utilities sectors greet the public and show off new equipment, May 18, 2007.
(photo by Katie Falkenberg/The Washington Times) Having relied on their husbands or family their entire lives, the women seeking shelter at this dar-ul-aman, or women’s shelter, in Pakistan must learn to survive on their own. Each morning the bedroom doors are locked from the outside, and the women are required to gather to learn and practice vocational skills such as sewing and embroidery, in hopes that once they leave, they will be able to be self-sufficient. Photographed September 28, 2007.
(photo by Sarah Nix) Edna Kepple, 82, asks her son, Chuckie, about a phone call from a customer at Kepple’s Garage, the business that she and her husband have owned and operated with their four sons for 57 years, February 2, 2006. Not much has changed over the years aside from the vehicles that the family fixes and John’s aging hands taking on a permanent oil-colored tint. Some customers have continued to bring their cars to Kepple’s for over 30 years. And, Edna still wears her hair the same way she styled it on her wedding day.
(Photo by Amy Toensing/Reportage by Getty Images) Little girl dresses hang on a laundry line on a porch August 1, 2002 in Utuado, Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico was an outpost of Spanish colonialism for 400 years, until the United States took possession in 1898. Today Puerto Rico's Spanish-speaking culture reflects its history - a mix of African slaves, Spanish settlers, and Taino Indians. Puerto Ricans fight in the U.S. armed forces but are not entitled to vote in presidential elections. They passionately debate their relationship with the U.S. with about half the island wanting to become the 51st state and the other half wanting to remain a U.S. commonwealth. A small percentage feel the island should be an independent country. While locals grapple with the evils of a burgeoning drug trade and unchecked development, drumbeats still drive the rhythms of African-inspired bomba music.
(photo by Andrea Bruce/The Washington Post) Miriam prays with her aunt in her aunt’s Baghdad home. Miriam and her family were left homeless after U.S. bombing " attened their house in the initial days of the Iraq invasion, January 29, 2007. The family stayed in the homes of relatives and friends for a year, moving every few weeks.
(photo by Susana Raab) Haitian Migrant Daughter after Mass, Immokalee, Florida. 2006.
(photo by Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) Defeated, Iliana Castro, 18, of San Salvador puts her head down as she sits on a bench in the border patrol station in Weslaco, Texas, after being caught crossing into the United States illegally, May 4, 2006.
(photo by Nicole Martyn / Patuxent Publishing Company) A group of girls gathers in the bathroom to chat during a middle school dance at St. Louis School in Clarksville, Maryland, April 8, 2005.
(photo by Nancy Pastor/The Washington Times) Louise Kurtz, a survivor of the attack on the Pentagon, received burns on 70 percent of her body, she is photographed in her Spotsylvania, Va., home that she takes great pride in decorating herself, Monday August 7, 2006.
(photo by Yanina Manolova) Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia was founded by two gynecologists from Australia in 1974, Dr. Catherine Hamlin, and her husband, Dr. Reginald Hamlin. The patients of the hospital are women with childbirth injuries. The injured women suffer in silence for years. Fistula creates an unyielding inconvenience not only for the woman living with this condition, but also for her family and her entire community. Because of the smell of constantly leaking urine, these women are often shunned from the village and have no means for survival. Many of them go to monasteries to live. Others choose the anonymity of homelessness in a big city, until someone tells them that a cure awaits them in places such as Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital or some of its outreach centers in Bahr Dar, Yirgalem, and Mekelle. July 30, 2007.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) Aidia Bryant, 3, left, and her sister Cassidy Moock, 10, play with their Barbie dolls on Friday, Dec. 1, 2006, in Lorton, Va. "Barbies are awesome," says Cassidy, "they're like little people you get to dress yourself."
(photo by Sarah Evans/Education Week) Jiexiao Peng, right, a 34-year-old teacher who has taught for 10 years, helps her students with a math assignment at Jinwan No. 1 Primary School in Zhuhai, China, April 8, 2007. For many, teaching provides one of the most stable occupations in the country. In primary schools over fifty percent of teachers are women.
(photo by Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) About 800 people gathered in front of the United House of Prayer for All People at 601 M St. NW for an outdoor church service followed by a mass baptism by fire hose, August 26, 2007. The annual ritual is in its 81st year. A majority of the congregation is female.
(photo by Jessica Koscielniak-Woolf) Catherine Conley, 24, of Alexandria, Virginia, stands in her underwear after losing over 100 lbs. from bariatric surgery, December 5, 2006. Conley underwent a vertical gastrectomy in February 2006, where more than 85% of her stomach was removed. Conley now hopes for plastic surgery of the abdomen, arms, and breasts. “You don’t wake up after weight-loss surgery expecting to be a supermodel,” said Conley.
(photo by Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo) Eric Murphy, 13, left, Dayon Murray, 4, and Eriqua Lewis, 8, attend a candlelight vigil in memory of four sisters in southeast Washington on Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008. The four children of Banita Jacks, ages 5 to 16, were found dead in their home on Jan. 9, 2008, and their mother is accused of their murders.
(photo by Nicole Martyn/Patuxent Publishing Company) Each year, African American girls from Columbia, Maryland - following in the steps of their mothers, aunts and grandmothers before them - mark their entrance into womanhood and society with a curtsey at the Delta Sigma Theta Alumnae Association's Debutante Cotillion. Debutantes chat in a salon outside the ballroom as the Delta Sigma Theta Cotillion approaches, March 11, 2006.
(photo by Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) Tiashia Pinkett, 28, center, cries as her brother's coffin is put into the hearse. She is being held by an employee of the funeral home, August 13, 2003.
(photo by Amy Toensing/Reportage by Getty Images) Usha Pal gets dressed after bathing in Vrindaven, India. Usha has been a widow for 20 years. She came to Vrindaven to live in an ashram and survive by praying and singing in the Hindu temples, where if she prays all day she will make six rupees, equaling about seven cents a day. The women receive a token on arrival and do not get paid until they have prayed for the full three hours. 2005.
(photo by Astrid Riecken/The Washington Times) Russian immigrant Daria Lavrentieva poses for a portrait in Washington, D.C., 2008.
(photo by Sarah Evans/Education Week) Diane Turner visits an abandoned gold mine turned tourist attraction near Mesa with her daughters Brandi and Ashleigh, left, October 26, 2004. Turner, a mother of 10 who has been homeless in the past, is taking a class at Parent University to help her family cope with a recent divorce and move.
(photo by Maisie Crow) Vivian drinks a beer while her son, William, washes dishes at their home in San Jose, Costa Rica, July 3, 2006. Vivian and her children clean graves for a living, making barely enough money to purchase the necessities, including beer. Vivian says drinking keeps her happy.
(photo by Katja Heinemann/Novus Select) Nine-year-old Sophie attends an urban summer camp program in the Bronx, New York, for children with ADHD and other behavioral disorders to learn to control her violent outbursts. Struggling with a dual diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Syndrome (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Sophie has been expelled from several schools and has a hard time forming friendships and lasting bonds. None of the medications that are used to treat ADHD seem to be working. The program she attends at New York University’s Child Study Center is designed to help children learn coping skills and strategies to control their emotions and behavior and interact in social settings. After refusing to re-join her classmates during swim period, and acting out against a counselor, Sophie is put on “time out,” July 19, 2007. She pouts on a bench, next to the counselor’s log book, which lists the children’s minute-to-minute behavior and assigns reward points and demerits in an unforgiving tally.
(photo by Katie Falkenberg/The Washington Times) Women pass their days resting on the beds in the cramped living spaces of the rooms in this dar-ul-aman, or women’s shelter, in Lahore, Pakistan, September 24, 2007. Although the few bedrooms to house these women–who have been threatened, or are victims of domestic violence–are large, living quarters are still full with beds to meet the needs of the large number of women seeking refuge. The women can only leave the shelter once their court order comes through. Because lawyers can only be arranged by the government or family members, many women end up living in the shelter for months or even years.
(photo by Astrid Riecken/The Washington Times ) Born in Germany and raised by Turkish-Egyptian parents, dancer and choreographer Nejla Y. Yatkin chose to bring the tragic life of Mata Hari on stage. In her solo dance show named “Deconstructing Mata Hari,” Nejla explores images often associated with Mata Hari such as exoticism, espionage, criminal proceedings, confusion, and uncertainty. At the end of her show, the question whether Mata Hari deserved to be executed remains timelessly unanswered. 2005.
(photo by Sarah Nix/Patuxent Publishing Company) Deidra Davis, left, of Washington County and Lai’Yonea Branch of Harford County prepare for bedtime in the dormitory at the Maryland School for the Deaf on October 26, 2006. Half of the students enrolled spend at least one night a week in the dorms.
(photo by Andrea Bruce/The Washington Post) Lauren Keene, 10, is inspected before her age group’s competition in the Miss Southern Belle contest in Grundy, Virginia, one of Buchanan County’s fundraisers for the American Cancer Society, December 17, 2007. The county is the poorest in Virginia but is also the source of some of the most successful cancer research fundraisers in the state.
(photo by Melissa Golden) Rebecca Duffell and Karen Lee decided to cement their relationship by getting married at a Unitarian church in Bethesda, MD, September 1, 2007. They are still not recognized by the U.S. government as a married couple.
(photo by Michelle Frankfurter) 2005
(photo by Abby Greenawalt) Because they had the courage to live, to swim, to dance, to cry, to be mothers and wives and not to be mothers and wives. 2004.
(photo by Katja Heinemann/Aurora Select) Brecken Swartz paints the toenails on her adoptive daughter Zhou Lin’s prostheses in Greenbelt, Maryland, April 21, 2007. The teenager had been severely burned in a kerosene lamp accident in her native Sichuan Province in China. Swartz encountered the girl on a trip to Beijing, where her family had traveled desperate for assistance. She promised help, and keeping that promise, first paid school fees for the girl, then 12, and later arranged for free medical care for Zhou Lin at Shriner hospital in Boston. After multiple surgeries, including the amputation of the lower part of both legs, it became increasingly clear that a return to rural China would have posed a severe risk to Zhou Lin’s health, so eventually her mother faced the hard decision to leave her eldest daughter behind in America, where she would receive the high quality health care and schooling that her impoverished family would not be able to offer her back home.
(photo by Jessica Koscielniak-Woolf) Underneath the covers, Catherine Lynch of Alexandria, Va. spends the majority of her final days sleeping in a room at her daughter Catherine Conley's house. Conley began taking care of her mother about a year before her death when she was diagnosed with renal failure. "Since my dad died, my mother never really was the same," said Conley. Lynch passed away May 8, 2007.
(photo by Gabriela Bulisova) A single refugee is a tragedy; over four million refugees is a statistic. As the number of Iraqis forced to flee their homes reaches unprecedented levels, they turn into numbers: 4.9 million nameless, anonymous nonentities, statistically relevant yet individually insignificant. Nawras, photographed in 2008, is a 21-year-old Iraqi refugee who escaped from Fallujah with her family after her older brother was killed in a random market bombing, their family house was bombed, and her father, a former army officer, was targeted by a militant faction.
(photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post) Former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Capitol Hill Friday, March 16, 2007.
(photo by Abby Greenawalt) Because they had the courage to live, to swim, to dance, to cry, to be mothers and wives and not to be mothers and wives. 2005.
(photo by Monica Lopossay/The Baltimore Sun) A young woman who drank battery acid was rushed into the Haiti State Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in hopes that the doctors from the Comfort could help her, September 2, 2007. The Comfort sent the young woman away as they said they are not prepared to deal with medical emergencies. U.S. Naval Hospital Ship Comfort, based in Baltimore, Maryland, deployed to Central and South America on a medical humanitarian mission, including a week stay in Haiti. The young woman was said to have drunk the acid in response to her boyfriend breaking up with her.
(UPI Photo/Alexis C. Glenn) U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), right, reaches out to shake hands with Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) (not pictured) as her husband, Bill Clinton, left, hugs Senator Nelson's wife Grace before Sen. Clinton took a ceremonial oath of office in the Old Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC., January 4, 2007.
(photo by Juana Arias/The Washington Post) Saundra Adams (right) and her five-year-old grandson Chancellor are reflected in a car window in Charlotte, North Carolina, December 4, 2004. Her daughter Cherika Adams was killed five years earlier by Carolina Panthers football star Ray Carruth. Cherika died but she delivered Chancellor, who is brain damaged.
(photo by Yanina Manolova) Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia was founded by two gynecologists from Australia in 1974, Dr. Catherine Hamlin, and her husband, Dr. Reginald Hamlin. The patients of the hospital are women with childbirth injuries. The injured women suffer in silence for years. The success rate at the Hamlin Fistula Hospital is 83%. Approximately 10% of the women need additional procedures. The hospital covers all expenses. The International Fistula Foundation provides funding for restoring the health and dignity of women in Ethiopia suffering from this life-altering condition. July 31, 2007.
(photo by Susana Raab) Four summer girlfriends pose on the beach of Mancora, Peru. 2008.