Things I found this week

World Press Photo of the Year

Photo taken by Samuel Arada for the NYTimes in a field hospital in Yemen. From his series, Fighting for Change

"Jurors said the photo of a veiled woman holding a wounded relative in her arms after a demonstration in Yemen captured multiple facets of the "Arab Spring" uprisings across the Middle East last year. It was taken at a field hospital inside a mosque in Sanaa on October 15.

Jury chair Aidan Sullivan said: "The winning photo shows a poignant, compassionate moment, the human consequence of an enormous event, an event that is still going on. We might never know who this woman is, cradling an injured relative, but together they become a living image of the courage of ordinary people that helped create an important chapter in the history of the Middle East." Photolog, World Press Photo of the Year

We know pain when we see it. We know love when we see it. There's something all the more poignant when we see love and pain without seeing the any of the hallmarks of individuality: a face, hair color, age, or shape and size.

Is this his lover? his sister? his mother? an aunt? his grandmother? Somehow, it doesn't matter. A woman comforts a strong man in a moment of intense pain. Without the individuality that we in the US love so much, the photo gives us raw, pure human compassion in a moment in time when the whole world shifted.

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