Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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  • An opulent home with three bedrooms and three living rooms in Huaxi.
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  • A two generation family in their living room.
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  • Conference room in a luxury resort in Grumeti Reserve.
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  • A young cowboy plays dead on the living room floor in a dramatic western fantasy involving knives and guns and a stuffed horse ready for a quick get-away.
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  • A group of Congolese women and children in a waiting room for medical care to the Pygmy tribes people.
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  • A young cowboy sheriff with a badge, black hat, red flannel shirt and belt buckle steadies his hand on his weapon ready for action in his living room on the ranch.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7517_1222922.jpg
  • At eyou.com they have a climbing wall and the CEO’s computer (that was used to found the company) is embedded partially into the wall of the conference room. These employees work in a faux-silicon-valley atmosphere. Eyou wants to bring Facebook to China, which brings up some serious issues. Facebook is based on knowing and trusting your community of friends. But many Chinese only feel comfortable using pseudonyms and eyou forces them to be who they are when they talk about issues with their parents, girlfriends or boyfriends.
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  • Rachel is a “headhunter” for the Comfort Class, which is the buffer class between first world needs and third world sweatshops or between first world companies and third world consumers. Rachel is single and lives at home with her parents, who were part of one of the worst social experiments in history. Mao unified the country, but then was responsible for the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, countless famines. Then, Deng proclaimed, “To get rich is glorious” and opened the flood gates to the “Special Economic Zone” cities on the south coast, creating the largest peacetime human migration in history. Many 20-somethings say that Tiananmen Square had to be put down or it would have hurt Deng’s economic plans and they would not have their nice apartments with flat screens in every room.
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  • Rachel shops for a new outfit to go on an upcoming date. The fashion store called Thre3 is run by her friend on the Bund in Shanghai. Her dressing room takes two assistants to close—another example of some of the over-the-top culture. The green frock has a $2,200 price tag.
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  • At the A Fun Ti Carnival Restaurant, ethnic dancers, wait staff, performers are all from Xinjiang Province in North West China.
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  • A couple at 'Michael's Genuine Food & Drink' restaurant.
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  • A waitress takes orders at trendy Mediterranean Bistro.
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  • At 'Michael's Genuine Food & Drink' restaurant.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MT5959_1376342.jpg
  • A waiter serves tea to guests on a silver tray in the posh Badrutt's Palace Hotel which opened in 1896 and has welcomed celebrities like Alfred Hitchcock, Audrey Hepburn and Charlie Chaplin. Sant Moritz can be formal and elegant, drawing fashionable tourists.
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  • A family eats together in the home they all share.
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  • Trying on clothes and jewelry for an accessory photo shoot.
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  • Three generations play in the home they share.
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  • Trying on clothes and jewelry for an accessory photo shoot.
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  • Trying on clothes and jewelry for an accessory photo shoot.
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  • The staircase of an opulent home in Huaxi.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176513.JPG
  • An afternoon in an opulent home in Huaxi.
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  • The dancers, wait staff, and performers are all migrant workers from Xinjiang Province in Northwest China. Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who go 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 120 million (approximately 9% of the population). China has been experiencing the largest mass migration in history. An estimated 230 million Chinese (2010), roughly equivalent to two-thirds the population of the U.S., have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years. About 13 million more join them every year—and 500 to perhaps 800 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.
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  • Inside a couple's apartment in Beijing.
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  • Staff and customers at a Thai restaurant in an upscale shopping mall.
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  • Backlighting through yellow curtains at a restaurant in Shanghai.
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  • A young woman with her baby and her mother.
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  • A couple in a restaurant decorated with fish tanks.
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  • A baby girl is fed by her mother as other women observe.
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  • 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 with the longest name I saw in China, decided one day they would just photograph the interior of the restaurant with all the customers and then have it printed on huge canvas sheets so it feels like you are sitting inside the restaurant – inside the restaurant.
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  • The dancers, wait staff, and performers are all migrant workers from Xinjiang Province in Northwest China. Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who go 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 120 million (approximately 9% of the population). China has been experiencing the largest mass migration in history. An estimated 230 million Chinese (2010), roughly two-thirds the population of the U.S., have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years. About 13 million more join them every year—an expected 250 million by 2012, and 300 to perhaps 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.
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  • A performer at a restaurant.
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  • Heirloom tomatoes support a blackboard listing the fare of the day.
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  • A large extended family cans apples from their garden. everyone has a different chore from washing the fruit, peeling and cutting it to put into jars. After a hot water bath, the jars are divided up to store for the winter.
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  • The matriarch of the family that contracts for wild horse round ups makes notes into her computer.
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  • A family with a dry well living in Clovis, New Mexico. About 30 families are without water from drought and heavy agricultural use that pumps from the Ogallala Aquifer.
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  • A photographer on assignment in the Moscow Planning Center and Reproduction Maternity Home.
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  • In a complicated family life, the grandparents were farmers and lost the land and their occupations to development. If the grandparents did not have a child they would be homeless. Ironically, the same development that took his home now supports their daughter, Ding, who works in the industrial park occupying the land that was once the father’s farm.
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  • A lone office denizen at night.
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  • A fish tank separates patrons from the kitchen at a restaurant on East Nanjing Road | Shanghai, China
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  • A Chinese woman runs a chain of boutique spas.
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  • Office workers at computers.
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  • A man shoots a photo of his grandson and daughter in law.
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  • Jim and Dana Setters enjoy their million-dollar home built inside a cave.
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  • The kitchen of a seafood restaurant in Hong Kong.<br />
<br />
According to WWF figures, Hong Kong has the second-highest per-capita seafood consumption in Asia, and is the world’s eighth-largest seafood consumer.<br />
<br />
Damaged by decades of human activity, Hong Kong’s rich marine ecosystem requires concerted conservation effort.
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  • A chef prepares a celebratory meal of whole reef fish. According to WWF figures, Hong Kong has the second-highest per-capita seafood consumption in Asia, and is the world’s eighth-largest seafood consumer.<br />
<br />
Damaged by decades of human activity, Hong Kong’s rich marine ecosystem requires concerted conservation effort.<br />
<br />
From large marine mammals such as dolphins and porpoises to an array of fishes, crustaceans and coral species, the range of sea-life found in Hong Kong’s waters is as captivating as it is diverse. But for many of the approximately 6,000 species that comprise the territory’s marine ecosystem, life is getting harder year after year. Affected by overfishing, heavy boat traffic, various forms of pollution, and habitat loss caused by coastal development, a growing number of creatures that once boasted healthy populations are now classified as vulnerable or endangered
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  • Equestrian competition at the Brazoria County Fair.
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  • Russian parents with their two children.
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  • A Russian woman admires her newborn with her daughter.
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  • A woman admires fluorescent jellyfish in the lobby of Hotel Victor.
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  • Children help their mother unload the dishwasher in the kitchen of their home on Prince of Wales Island.
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  • It's a festive atmosphere in the kitchen as a  couple prepares dinner for friends on their float house. Located on a secluded bay, visitors arrive by boat or by a water landing in a plane.
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  • The kitchen counter looks like a still life of oranges, a knife and cutting boards in Convent Saint John in Val Mustair.
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  • Mother teaches her daughter to cook traditional foods in their family's restaurant in the small Ladin village of LaVal in the Dolomites.
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  • A farm woman takes a break from baking biscuits and taps on a window to get the attention of her nephew. Ladin village of LaVal is small and the people speak their own ethnic language in this isolated region of the Dolomites. They also speak German and Italian.
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  • Men cook ramps in the church kitchen during spring ramps dinner while women greet families who gather at long tables for the traditional feast.
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  • Family gathers around the table at the homestead for a summer lunch with corn and tomatoes from the garden.
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  • A BLM contractor is a no-nonsense tough woman with a sweet nature and good heart who loves working with horses.
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  • A Tupperware party in Mumbai, India.
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  • A woman with a dry well cooks with water from a container. The family hauls water in a pick up truck for personal use cooking and bathing. Wells run dry for about 30 nearby families from heavy agricultural use from the Ogallala Aquifer.
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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.
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  • Young staff around computers in a dot-com office.
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  • Young staff at their computers in an office.
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  • Young workers at a rising web company sponsoring the Olympic Games. There is a new phenomenon breaking through the “factory of the world” culture of China. New businesses cater to the newly wealthy Chinese, so instead of ‘B to B,’ these businesses are ‘C to C’ (Copy to China). The idea is to find something that is working spectacularly well in the U.S. or Europe and then import it for newly wealthy Chinese consumers. SOHU.com wants to be the Google of China and was one of the main sponsors of the Beijing Summer Olympics. Personalization of cubicles goes a little over the top, and I noticed that the workspaces that had American fast food wrappers and liter bottles of Coke also had some of the first overweight Chinese I had seen.
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  • A young worker at a rising web company sponsoring the Olympic Games.
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  • Young workers at a rising web company sponsoring the Olympic Games.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176443.JPG
  • Yvonne’s boutique spas in Shanghai offer 13 types of facials, plus a chocolate pedicure for $48. Her father escaped China in 1949 with his family and two of his siblings died in the crossing (there were ten children, his father had multiple wives). Yvonne’s family is typical of the Chinese who were smart enough to get out when it was bad and smart enough to get back in when things were improving. Diva Life is set up for two types of clients; the ex-pat tai tai wives of diplomats and the wannabe Chinese who follow that crowd into Yvonne’s spa. Yvonne has the Diva life. She designs her own furniture, spa, and clothes. She spends the morning at the fabric market and meeting with her tailor, and then goes to her office. But the main reason she started the spa is so that she can have a couple hours of spa treatment any day she likes.
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  • Lu (pushing carriage) lives with his daughter-in-law and son who is trying to do a start up GPS business and often works from home. Lu was sent to prison during the Cultural Revolution and tries to keep pace with today’s values, but still has questions about his son’s world. The “little capitalists” that live with their Cultural Revolution parents often have conflicts of ideology. The older generation thinks in a more Confucian way—never rise above your teacher, never rise above your father, others’ needs are more important than your own.
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  • A man on a computer and a woman with a child in a Chinese apartment.
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  • A young man hooks up a computer at a new small GPS company.
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  • A young man inspects the inside of a computer at a new GPS business.
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  • A baby in a stroller and two women in an apartment.
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  • A woman in an office near a poster of the Statue of Liberty.
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  • Two men wearing cowboy hats wait outside a public restroom at the Brazoria County Fair.
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  • At Boston National Historical Park, 15 rangers shared one coed shower until th elavatory was remodeled.
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  • Inside a house at the Mission Hills Golf Club's housing development.
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  • A bride checks out a dining room for her reception.
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  • It is a slow night as a sex worker sits in the lobby of the hotel where she and other transgender sex workers rent rooms for 30 minutes. The city of Quito is working to organize sex workers to help their conditions.
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  • Sunset and shadows fall across a building in Lowry Pueblo, an archeological site located in Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. A treasure of Ansazi Indian ruins in Colorado, the pueblo was constructed around 1060 AD atop abandoned pit houses from an earlier period of occupation. A total of 40 rooms and 8 kivas at its peak in the early 11th century, it was home to approximately 100 people. The 176,000 acre monument of federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management includes 20,000 archeological sites.
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  • Student friends share cigarettes and talk.
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  • Shadows fall across Painted Hand Pueblo, a tower in Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, a treasure of Ansazi Indian ruins in Colorado. The 176,000 acres of federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management includes 20,000 archeological sites.
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  • Physical therapy room at the largest nursing home facility in Italy.
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  • A waiter prepares a dining room by freshening the floral arrangements in a plush hotel in the Swiss Alps. The elegant Badrutt's Palace opened in 1896, and over the years has welcomed tourists and celebrities like Alfred Hitchcock, Audrey Hepburn and Charlie Chaplin.
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  • The boy prince of Toro in his throne room.
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  • Shanghai Jiao Tong University students in their dorm room.
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  • A room full of 1,000-pound patients receiving surgery at famed Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital.  The facility is respected throughout the world for innovative and skilled treatment for horses including surgery, internal medicine, advanced diagnostic imaging, a specialized Podiatry Center and specialized Reproductive Center. Thoroughbred horses are like high-powered human athletes and sustain repairable injuries that can keep them racing.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7017_720971-2.JPG
  • A waiter unfolds linen table cloths as he prepares a dining room for the evening in a plush hotel in glitzy, St. Moritz. Badrutt's Palace hotel is an iconic, luxury destination known for amenities and fine service. Huge floral arrangements and framed oil paintings create a formal elegance for tourists.<br />
The ornate Palace hotel opened in 1896 and over the years has welcomed celebrities like Alfred Hitchcock, Audrey Hepburn and Charlie Chaplin.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7139_1024076.jpg
  • A couple embrace in a messy college dorm room.
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  • A young woman eating in a communal dining room.
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  • Students in their dorm room at Shanghai's Jiao Tong University.
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  • Clearing room for a garden, Mbuti men hack through tropical hardwood. A logging company hires Pygmies to cut down their own forest which they depend on for their livelihood.
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  • Burning of the town of Dehue to make room for a coal processing plant. Inhabited homes were company owned, so families had no choice but to move before their community was demolished.
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  • This is an over the top spa, massage parlor, and hotel in the Suzhou Creek area of Shanghai. Guys walk from the men’s locker room through an aquarium tunnel filled with endangered species to the bath area. From there they can turn left and play ping pong or watch a movie with their family in their bathrobes, or they can turn right and meet their mistresses in a discreet room.
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  • Pygmies chop down the forest they need for their own survival. As Bantus move into this area and search for gold or other resources, these cancerous settlements in the forest grow and grow and eventually the Pygmies don't have the healthy forest they need to survive.
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  • A worker sets fire to a home that is demolished to rubble as a result of mine expansion. As mountaintop removal mine permits allow the surface mines to expand, they often displace residents in their way.  Dingess-Rum Coal Company served notice to Dehue residents renting old coal company houses, giving them 30 days to move. <br />
Dehue, like dozens of other mining towns, was once a busy center of activity with a grocery, post office, theater, barbershop, pool hall, school payroll office, and Civic Club. These communities become ghost towns and over time are dismantled. Day lilies and fruit trees often mark the spot of leveled homes lining a road.<br />
Dehue was located off Route 10 on Rum Creek south of Logan. It began in 1916 as a coal company town owned by Youngstown Mines Corporation. It existed as late as the 1970s, but the homes were never sold to private residents. Most houses were cleared and burned in 2000 and 2001.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_996260-1.JPG
  • A worker sets fire to a home that is demolished to rubble as a result of mine expansion. As mountaintop removal mine permits allow the surface mines to expand, they often displace residents in their way.  Dingess-Rum Coal Company served notice to Dehue residents renting old coal company houses, giving them 30 days to move. <br />
Dehue, like dozens of other mining towns, was once a busy center of activity with a grocery, post office, theater, barbershop, pool hall, school payroll office, and Civic Club. These communities become ghost towns and over time are dismantled. Day lilies and fruit trees often mark the spot of leveled homes lining a road.<br />
Dehue was located off Route 10 on Rum Creek south of Logan. It began in 1916 as a coal company town owned by Youngstown Mines Corporation. It existed as late as the 1970s, but the homes were never sold to private residents. Most houses were cleared and burned in 2000 and 2001.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6773_996260.jpg
  • Crowds in the infield are a long-standing tradition at the Kentucky Derby where it is standing room only to watch the horse races. The general admission attracts those to an area where the beer flows freely and many end up sunburned from having no shade.
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  • A man gently holds his great granddaughter in the living room of the Wyoming family ranch.
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  • Palomino Valley houses wild horses captured on public lands that are processed and prepared for adoption. A Bureau of Land Management facility in Nevada, mustangs trucked there are fed hay, vaccinated, given a freeze-mark brand and placed in corrals where they wait to be adopted or moved to another facility making room for more captured horses. There is little to no shelter from the sun in the barren facility.
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  • Framed portraits are displayed on the family organ in the living room of the Caudill-Miller homestead.
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  • A transgender sex worker straightens her hair extension while getting ready for work. She has her own room and lives with her aunt taking the bus nightly to the historic district of Quito.
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