Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • Passengers gaze out the windows of a bus in Shanghai. <br />
<br />
This easy migration of people from city to city is still hard for me to get used to. Seventeen years ago when I was traveling between Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, they all had a ring of policemen around them checking identity papers. I was in China trying to get through those rings of security during the Tiananmen Square uprising. I remember traveling with wire service photographers and driving through those checkpoints at 90 mph and seeing the policeman jump up and down on the dais—literally hopping mad—but there was nothing they could do because they did not have guns or radios. After being absent 17 years, I made (technically) five trips to China in about a one-year period. The growth is so fast paced I could feel the energy and the stress on the street. It makes you realize that our empire is over, but you can’t really understand that without being there. Even though the NYT has multiple stories, every day, on the growth and complexity of the Chinese economy, the average American has little idea what this means other than a fear that increased Chinese fuel consumption will somehow affect what they put in the tank of their SUV. Robert Frank photographed twentieth-century America, recording our coming of age—the baby boom, the start of television, car culture, modular housing, and relative wealth distributed throughout the middle class. His photographs are of progress, technology, plenty, but also the weary faces of waitresses and elevator operators who were desperately trying to join the economic party. Those 1950s faces remind me of a line in Leslie Chang’s story about modern China: “What looks like freedom just feels like pressure.”
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176403.jpg
  • A woman points while young people enjoy drinks and conversation in a crowded bar.<br />
Flashing neon strobe lights electrify night spot that attracts young people in Shanghai.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176546.jpg
  • A woman holds up a mirror as people shop in a mall that sells inexpensive jewelry and other goods.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176448.jpg
  • Flashing neon strobe lights electrify the dance floor creating a hypnotic scene at a bar scene attracting young people in Shanghai.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176545.jpg
  • Young Chinese gather at a pick up club to talk, smoke, dance and find a partner in the Shanghai social scene. <br />
All kinds of people are drawn to the club that also has a reputation for male prostitutes and mistresses to hang out.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176389.jpg
  • Restored Colonial colonnades edge Lima's Plaza de Armas, bringing many people into the streets of Peru's capital city. The era when the City of Kings was founded by conquistador Francisco Pizarro in 1535, established it as the showplace of Spanish South America.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187022.jpg
  • Pilgrims and local people bathe in the sacred Ganges River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7890_1386447.TIF
  • People bathing in the sacred Ganges River in Varanasi.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7890_1386315.TIF
  • A truck stuck in a muddy road with people standing about watching.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7112_763243.JPG
  • A group of Umbero people look with wonder at a polaroid photograph seeing their image for the first time.
    RANDY OLSON_MM6998_718284.jpg
  • Resettled people in a community neighboring a gold mine plant a garden for food.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1222975.JPG
  • A street scene of Pontic Greek people is reflected in a window.
    RANDY OLSON_MM6689_702588_10.TIF
  • A street scene of Pontic Greek people
    RANDY OLSON_MM6689_702588_9.TIF
  • Young people dance to music at a bar in a district full of clubs that attract night life in Quito.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_2512708.jpg
  • El Molo people in the village of Komote in Kenya's Lake Turkana region.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327865.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327791.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327790.JPG
  • People wait in line for food in Kakuma Refugee Camp near Lake Turkana.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327766.JPG
  • People wait in line for food in Kakuma Refugee Camp near Lake Turkana.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327765.JPG
  • Brimmed hats mark traditional costume of people of the Ecuadorian Sierra.
    RANDY OLSON_04319_2512777.JPG
  • People scavenging Guayaquil's trash dump to find food, clothing and treasures to take home.
    RANDY OLSON_04319_2512730.JPG
  • People walk along streets and pedestrian bridges in the historic center of Quito.
    QuitoBK_20150408_03556.tif
  • A street scene of Pontic Greek people is reflected in a window.
    RANDY OLSON_MM6879_708210.TIF
  • People ignore the monsoon rain while strolling the streets on Christmas eve.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7112_972062.JPG
  • Local people try to extract their truck stuck in the monsoon mud.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7112_761676.TIF
  • A water taxi ferries people to and from the airport on an island.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_1114717.jpg
  • People sitting outside a bar in the Over the Rhine district of Cincinnati, Ohio.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MT6872_1908454.jpg
  • People play in the surf along the beach during soft summer light in La Serena, Chile's premier beach resort. La Serena enjoys a transitional climate between the arid northern desert of the Atacama and the pleasant Mediterranean climate of the central coast.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187584.jpg
  • Local people cut firewood and make charcoal for the refugees in the Kakuma Refugee Camp near Lake Turkana.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2328030.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327793.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327792.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327789.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327788.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327783.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327780.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327778.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327777.JPG
  • People ice-fishing on the Ural River in front of the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Plant.
    GERD LUDWIG_06041_490448.jpg
  • People enjoying a riverboat cruise on the Ohio River.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MT6872_1908456.jpg
  • People run on the Great Lawn under the canopy framework of the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MT5887_1564381.jpg
  • People play in the surf in La Serena, Chile's premier beach resort north of Santiago. The white sand beach is rain free nine months of the year and enjoys a transitional climate between the arid northern desert of the Atacama and the pleasant Mediterranean climate of the central coast.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187581.jpg
  • People walk through Kenya's Lake Turkana region.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2328099.JPG
  • People living in the Kakuma Refugee Camp near Lake Turkana.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2328032.JPG
  • El Molo people at the water's edge in Komote in Kenya's Lake Turkana region.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327869.JPG
  • People butcher a camel in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327795.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327782.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327781.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327779.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327770.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp near Lake Turkana.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327764.JPG
  • People living in Kakuma Refugee Camp near Lake Turkana.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8259_2327763.JPG
  • Young people salute the flag during a ceremony honoring veterans.
    RANDY OLSON_06168_501379.JPG
  • A stylish woman dressed in roses on a white dress watches Chinese shoppers crowd the mall on escalators and walkways in Guangzhou. Young people are great consumers as China moves forward into a modern day society.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-1-4.jpg
  • Chinese shoppers crowd narrow aisles of the mall in Guangzhou. Young people are great consumers as China moves forward into a modern day society.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-1-3.jpg
  • Chinese shoppers crowd the mall on escalators and walkways in Guangzhou. Young people are great consumers as China moves forward into a modern day society.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-1.jpg
  • A lighted billboard showing a Chinese couple looms over shoppers at a  mall  in Guangzhou. Young people are great consumers as China moves forward into a modern day society.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-1-2.jpg
  • A model dressed in white shorts and tall boots sits on a hood of a car while a man admires the headlight at China International Automobile Exhibition. The event began in Guangzhou in 2003 and is one of the largest international auto shows in China. <br />
<br />
This event has an exhibition ground measuring 85,000 square meters and it filled eight exhibition halls. Over 370 exhibitors from 20 other countries and regions, took part in this exhibition, which was covered by more than 1,600 news reporters representing upwards of 510 TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and online media at home and abroad. 120,000 people attended.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176563.jpg
  • Residents of a remote village  in Kamchatka rush to meet the supply helicopter. Original inhabitants Khailino are indigenous. Dogs run wild in the street and locals on board a motorcycle race to try to get a woman on board to be taken where she can get medical attention. <br />
<br />
In Northern Kamchatka, indigenous Koryak people and Russians came for “Northern money” when the Soviet Union wanted to tame the area. Income paid was eight times more than a similar job in Moscow, so some people figured out how to get all the necessary permits to work. When default happened, no one in the remote outposts received salaries.  People made a living from salmon caviar and created fishing brigades with distribution systems. Living in a very small community of 700 residents, and the temperatures drop to –40° in the winter, everyone works hard to merely survive and are kind to each other.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1248213.TIF
  • A man awkwardly leans into his date at a popular, packed bar.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176545-1.jpg
  • A couple walks hand in hand crossing on a pedestrian escalator and walkway.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176348.jpg
  • A worker repairs electrical power lines above pedestrians. <br />
<br />
The need for electrical power is great in Shanghai and migrant workers are hired to hook up cables by strapping a high voltage wire around their waist walking on the actual wires that bring the electricity.  <br />
<br />
A coal-fired power plant comes online every four to five days in China that can power a city the size of San Diego. One hundred cities with populations over 1 million faced extreme water shortages. China’s survival has always been built on the notion of a vastly powerful, infallible center. And yet, air pollution contributed by these plants kills 400,000 people prematurely every year.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176331.jpg
  • Uniformed restaurant workers carry baskets of food from the kitchen for diners. They pass under a canvas sheet that shows a restaurant with people eating.<br />
<br />
All over China, young architects design buildings that are just experiments: throw in a bit of classical modern, a little Prairie style, a few Roman columns. This restaurant feels like you are sitting inside the restaurant – inside the restaurant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176304-1.jpg
  • A model and two people in Cultural Revolution costumes at a car show pose for photographers.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176270.jpg
  • Uniformed restaurant workers carry baskets of food from the kitchen for diners. They pass under a canvas sheet that shows a restaurant with people eating.<br />
<br />
All over China, young architects design buildings that are just experiments: throw in a bit of classical modern, a little Prairie style, a few Roman columns. This restaurant feels like you are sitting inside the restaurant – inside the restaurant.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176304.jpg
  • Wearing a black hat, a sister waits while her brother unhooks a horse from a sled. Some Ladinos choose a simple life in LaVal the Dolomites, a village so isolated that the people there have their own language. In small villages, population continues to drop and older people go unmarried.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7139_1024127.JPG
  • From comfortable plush seats, young people watch the entertainment of a stage show including singing and dancing at the Shanghai Orient Rome Holiday Hotel.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176399-4.jpg
  • Two men sit outside a shop on a street that is known for wedding attire where dresses at the doorway lure shoppers inside.  <br />
<br />
Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who move to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. According to Chinese government statistics, the current number of migrant workers in China is estimated at over 120 million. China is experiencing the largest mass migration of people from the countryside to the city in history with an estimated 400 million by 2025. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176322.jpg
  • The need for electrical power is so great in Shanghai that migrant workers are hired to hook high voltage wires. They strap one around their waist and pull it across an already stressed grid by walking on the actual wires that bring the electricity.  <br />
<br />
A coal power plant contributing air pollution comes online every four to five days in China that can power a city the size of San Diego.  Air pollution contributed by these plants kills 400,000 people prematurely every year.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176327.jpg
  • Live crocodiles with their mouths taped shut are ignored by shoppers outside the Yumin Restaurant in a Guangzhou mall.  <br />
<br />
The huge, live reef fish restaurant employs 400 Chinese chefs that prepare the critters as meals, but people walk by talking on their cell phones unaware and trip over live, hissing, sometimes charging crocodiles. <br />
<br />
The pricey, exotic meat—steamed, braised, or stewed—is believed to cure cough and prevent cancer. “People don’t care about the cost,” says manager Wang Jianfei, “they just care about health.”
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1143433-1.jpg
  • Live crocodiles with their mouths taped shut are ignored by shoppers outside the Yumin Restaurant in a Guangzhou mall.  <br />
<br />
The huge, live reef fish restaurant employs 400 Chinese chefs that prepare the critters as meals, but people walk by talking on their cell phones unaware and trip over live, hissing, sometimes charging crocodiles. <br />
<br />
The pricey, exotic meat—steamed, braised, or stewed—is believed to cure cough and prevent cancer. “People don’t care about the cost,” says manager Wang Jianfei, “they just care about health.”
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1143433.jpg
  • Young people dance under neon lights in the Armani Club in the Liu lin Road area. Bars are a little crazier in south China where there is an abundance of new wealth.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176391-1.jpg
  • Young people dance under a multi-colored lights that glow at a club in Shanghai.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176390-4.jpg
  • Young people dance under a blue glow at a pick up club while others in the crowd watch seated at tables.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176390-1.jpg
  • Young people dance under a blue glow at a pick up club that has a reputation for mistresses and male prostitutes gathering to connect.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176390.jpg
  • Young people dance under neon lights in the Armani Club in the Liu lin Road area. Bars are a little crazier in south China where there is an abundance of new wealth.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176391.jpg
  • Aerial photo shows rows of identical houses in Huaxi Village, once known as the richest village in China. It is emblematic of the beginning of the massive urbanization of China and the largest human migration in history from the rural areas into the cities. <br />
<br />
It was a honored as a model of socialist economy. Established in 1961, collective investment efforts boomed in 1998 launching steel, iron and textile industries that by 2003, profited over USD 1.2 billion. One third of the profits come from the steel industry. In recent years, the company has shown it's first-ever loss. <br />
<br />
Workers didn't migrate away because their model rural farm, instead, changed into a modern industrial city. The former Farmer’s Village has free health care and education, identical villas with red tile roofs, landscaped lawns and two car garages but there is no entertainment, and residents cannot move and take their wealth with them.<br />
<br />
When they first started factories, they worked in secret with no windows. When government officials came to inspect, they sent all the workers out to the fields and disguised the factories.
    MM7493_20070504_24569.tif
  • Women from the rural countryside learn skills to work as maids for the newly wealthy class. They are trained to cook and iron at the Fuping Vocational Skills Training School. Li reacts to flying grease in one of the cooking classes.<br />
<br />
Since opening up its economy in 1978 and moving toward a market economy, China has lifted about 400 million people out of poverty, according to the World Bank. But this has led to wide income inequalities that the Communist Party is trying to address through its notion of a “harmonious society” that has a more even distribution of the benefits of recent decades of speedy economic growth. <br />
<br />
Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who go to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. In some cities, the migrants nearly outnumber the residents. One young girl told National Geographic, “All the young people leave our village. I’m not going back. Many can’t even afford a bus ticket and hitchhike to Beijing.” Overall, the Chinese government has tacitly supported migration as means of transforming China from a rural-based economy to an urban-based one.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-5.jpg
  • Red and green neon lights shine on a smiling woman while young people dance at a crowded club.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176390-2.jpg
  • A woman and children inspect new products that bombard Chinese consumers daily. Just keeping up with the new air freshener and portable camera can be overwhelming. They are sitting in a city park, Being Hai Park in Beijing where people ride on paddle boats on the lake.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176521-1.jpg
  • Guangzhou has huge live reef fish restaurants that have 3 or 400 chinese chefs and live crocodiles on the floor of the mall-like area outside the restaurant. The crocs mouths were taped shut, and they would be meals soon, but people would be walking along, talking on their cell phones, not paying attention and trip over live, hissing, charging crocodiles.
    GFHK_20060331_02988.tif
  • Young people wearing orange t shirts at the counter of a Sams Club. The company also opened the first Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, China.<br />
<br />
This is the city where Deng made his famous “to be rich is glorious” speech. The signs that hang overhead in this abundant store proudly announce, “Made in China.” <br />
<br />
In China 17 years ago, the best store was a government “Friendship Store” that displayed a photo of a female employee on the wall with a sign underneath, “Worst Employee of the Month.” The only way you could motivate workers at that time was to shame them. <br />
<br />
Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, beauty in China is seen as utilitarian. Cosmetics for instance are a major business in China and women in the China Middle see this as an important part of their lifestyle. Wal-Mart aims for the Comfort Class consumer earning between $5,000 and $20,000 a year.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176310-1.jpg
  • Young people are doused with water as men engage in a water fight at China Folk Culture Villages in Shenzhen.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176301-2.jpg
  • People stand crowded shoulder to shoulder on a stairway in Mingzhu Park during the October holiday.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176377.jpg
  • Young people are doused with water as men engage in a water fight at China Folk Culture Villages in Shenzhen.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176301-1.jpg
  • In villages between Lake Victoria and the Serengeti Ecosystem, truckloads of rotting fish carcasses are driven to the local markets and sold. <br />
<br />
The filets were cut off in the processing plants in Musoma and shipped to Europe overnight, and Africans get only the bones. <br />
<br />
This is a cotton production region and these people have just sold their crops.  They have money to buy good food, but don’t have the option to buy their own fish from their own lakes.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7393_1055372.JPG
  • Dressed up in a suit and bow tie, a young boy patiently waits for cake to be offered while attending a wedding reception in the restored Colonial colonnades edge of Lima's Plaza de Armas.  Well dressed guests mingle at the party towering over the youth.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187638-6.JPG
  • The rapid growth of cities like Kolkata can be attributed largely to rural-urban migration. A large group of "Untouchables" bath in former British horse watering trough in Kolkata, Bengal State, India. <br />
<br />
More than 160 million people in India are Dalit or Untouchables who are tainted by their birth inso a caste system that deems them impure. They are relegated to the lowest jobs and live in fear of being publicly humiliated, beaten, and raped by upper castes seeking to keep them in their place. <br />
<br />
They are not allowed to drink from the same wells, attend the same temples or wear shoes in the presence of an upper cast according to a Human Rights Watch senior researcher.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7890_1386451.TIF
  • Models walk down a runway and across stage lights for a high fashion bridal show featuring designer gowns. The cosmopolitan city of Monterrey is modern and industrial attracting young people with money to spend.
    MELISSA FARLOW_04526_1187042.jpg
  • A young woman wanders through a resettlement village where a gold mining company took over the land, then built houses and moved people into the new community. The problem is there is no work, food or wate.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7339_1222971.TIF
  • A dancer in green sparkles and fringe performs with a live snake at the Fun Ti Carnival Restaurant in Beijing. <br />
<br />
The dancers, wait staff, and performers are all migrant workers from Xinjiang Province in Northwest China. Migrant workers in China are mostly from impoverished regions who go to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. <br />
<br />
China has been experiencing the largest mass migration in history and people have left the countryside for the cities-perhaps 400 million people by 2025. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176492-1.jpg
  • A dancer in green sparkles and fringe performs with a live snake at the Fun Ti Carnival Restaurant in Beijing. <br />
<br />
The dancers, wait staff, and performers are all migrant workers from Xinjiang Province in Northwest China. Migrant workers in China are mostly from impoverished regions who go to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. <br />
<br />
China has been experiencing the largest mass migration in history and people have left the countryside for the cities-perhaps 400 million people by 2025. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176492.jpg
  • Maternity Ward at Mulago Hospital in Kampala.  Head of OB/GYN was taught by Jotham Musinguzi who became head of Population and Development Dept. for the government.  Jotham recently retired because he did not agree with the current president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. Museveni has a military background and just wants to get BOOTS ON THE GROUND. Jotham said he wants to bump Uganda's population up to 60M before he even starts to worry about infrastructure for all these people. Uganda is about 30M now.  About half of Uganda's population is under 15 and life expectancy is about 50.  Population has doubled from 1990 to now.
    MM7890_20100324_00121.tif
  • A dancer in green sparkles and fringe drapes a live snake over the shoulders of a male customer at the Fun Ti Carnival Restaurant in Beijing. <br />
<br />
The dancers, wait staff, and performers are all migrant workers from Xinjiang Province in Northwest China. Migrant workers in China are mostly from impoverished regions who go to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. <br />
<br />
China has been experiencing the largest mass migration in history and people have left the countryside for the cities-perhaps 400 million people by 2025. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176492-2.jpg
  • Young people converge nearby an American chain coffee-house in the Xintiandi mall area.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176341.jpg
  • Public displays of affection are rare, but these two young people are comfortable sitting close to each other and watching the world go by. Guang Hui Plaza is in the west part of Shanghai–Xugiahui area.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1143444.jpg
  • Dried shark fins sold at the Guangzhou Fish Market.<br />
Shark fins are used to make shark fin soup, a delicacy once prepared exclusively for the Chinese emperors and nobility. The cartilage from the fin is carefully dried and prepared, and used as an ingredient in a soup flavored with seafood or chicken broth and herbs.<br />
<br />
The demand for shark-fin soup has rocketed. It is still associated with privilege and social rank - a bowl of soup can cost up to US$100 - but the explosive growth in the Chinese economy means that hundreds of millions of people can now afford this luxury. Many consider it de rigueur at important events such as weddings, birthdays, business banquets and during Chinese New Year celebrations.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7393_1057854.JPG
  • A Ladin funeral procession seen trough a lace curtained window in a small village of LaVal in the Alps where the people are isolated and speak German and Italian but also Ladin, their own ethnic language.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7139_1024126.TIF
  • A farm family heads home after working in the fields in LaVal under the vista of the Dolomites.  The mountain cliffs are so steep that no glaciers formed on them. The Alps thrust up when tectonic plates collided between Africa and Eurasia.  The Ladin people living in the mountain region have a close bond with nature and the outdoors.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7139_1024120.jpg
  • The grooms antics amuse the bride during a wedding reception in Khailino in Kamchatka, Russia. It is important to note that some of the theater of this wedding happened because it is Russian tradition. The community has endured great hardship and a people who have adjusted to being really kind to each other to all survive together.
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  • A bride's father supplies caviar from his fishing camp. He got enough caviar to feed 200 people at his daughter’s wedding. <br />
<br />
The bride is one quarter indigenous—there is, however, an easy mix between indigenous and white Russians. This family decided to have a wedding although the bride is seven months pregnant. Common-law marriages are the norm among the indigenous people, so the entire town prepared for almost a year for this event.  Most of the decorations were brought in by MI-8 helicopter.  <br />
<br />
Russia wanted to “tame” the salmon zones in Kamchatka, so some moved to the northern communities that were technically war zones with the United States.  To do so, they had to have connections and get permits, then move to where they make eight times what they can in Moscow in government wages. When default happened and their state-subsidized salaries disappeared, all they were left with was the resource—salmon.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7593_1248204.TIF
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