As a young girl, Gladys Rife, 90, remembers secretly swimming off the banks of Cheshire, across the Ohio River to the other side just to pluck a watermelon off of its vine and swim back with her friends to gorge on the bounty of summer.
I was in Jacksonville, about to photograph my first out-of-town college football game as the solo shooter, and there I was, crying on the floor of the media bathroom, clutching my abdomen.
Drug addiction is real; it is menacing and ugly. But if we fail to maintain the humanity of the people who share their stories with us, addiction coverage turns drug users into caricatures or props. When suffering is coupled with exploitation, those who are photographed are never allowed to live outside of the pain they’re in, because those photos turn a single behavior into an identity that exists in perpetuity.
Ronald “Ted” Andrews was convinced after being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease that he was going to take charge of his own life and his own death.
Lola Muñoz, 13, has lived the last 18 months as if they were her last, because they are. She is an extraordinary girl. As she faces the terminal conclusion of an untreatable brain cancer, she has lived every day to its fullest with the complete and utter support and encouragement from her family.
Hours before daylight, hundreds of desperate people wait outside the gate. They hold pieces of paper with numbers, praying theirs are low enough to assure entry. They have traveled too far and endured too much to be denied.
New Bethany home for girls in Arcadia, La., operated from the 1970’s through 2001. State officials and law enforcement documented numerous confirmed reports of physical abuse of children who lived in the residential private christian home.
The nation’s only touring African American rodeo, the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo has brought bulldogging, roping, bareback bronco riding, bull riding, barrel racing and other events to cities across the nation for 27 years.
In 2008, Nancy Hinz had recently finished rehab, the last of three attempts at becoming sober after years of alcohol abuse. After not even a year of sobriety, Nancy was suddenly forgetting appointments and losing her way around her hometown. She would pause to call one of her sisters for directions to their houses, which she had visited hundreds of times.
Remote Area Medical (RAM), is a nonprofit volunteer medical relief corps based in Knoxville, Tennessee, RAM provides free health, dental and vision care to people in remote areas of the United States and around the world.