A selection of editorial portraits and portraits commissioned by artists.

In the aftermath of the earthquake thousands of people were left living on the streets, building their own tents with sticks and bed sheets. “We are suffering”, a woman at a camp settlement told me, then continued stamping coffee beans to sell on the street.

In a surrounding that resembles Afghanistan, American civilians go through a variety of vignettes that are similar to what they will experience in Afghanistan. Afghan actors play the role of policemen, protesters, judges,... The trainees spend one week here before they go to Afghanistan to serve one year as agriculture experts, governance advisors, urban planners,... (NYT, Dec. 20, 2009)

Dumitru was sold as a baby to an organized trafficking network. He is now reunited with his mother for the first time after 12 years.

Young, single mothers in Romania struggle to keep their children. Poverty, strengthened by the economic crisis, causes mothers, especially teenage mothers, to abandon their newborns. An ongoing project with the help of Samilia Foundation.

A portrait series of the families of migrant workers left behind in Tajikistan. With more than seventy percent rural population and a lack of paying jobs, many of the men had migrated to Russia and Kazakhstan for work. Some villages had only women and a few very old men and young boys remaining.(Global Post, Oct. 18, 2009)

Frightened by the rapid influx of migrants from Africa, European states have intensified border controls. As an unintended result, this caused migrants to make more desperate attempts to reach Europe. Squeezing into overcrowded, unguided and unsafe boats to cross the Mediterranean Sea is one of them...

This slideshow includes: boat migrants arriving in Lampedusa, objects left behind, and life in Italy.

The story of the new homeless in the U.S.

The Lubavitch Hasidic Jewish community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Palestinians are neither accepted as refugees with basic human rights, nor are they able to return to their homes; they have been stuck in transit camps for generations. These forgotten camps, bombed and isolated during the war, are now separated only by virtual poverty fences. Its people were among the first Palestinians to flee from the Palestine-Israel war in 1948 and are still waiting to return home.

An ever-growing selection of images of daily life from around the world.