The following photographs are meant to provoke emotion and thought. In warning, some of these photographs are graphic and shed awareness to the harshest of life's realities. However, I promise that after you see and read the stories behind these images, you will feel your heart speak to your soul in ways that it never has before.
Through love, hope, and tragedy, this is the world we are living in.
The hand of a starving child in Uganda.
A Russian soldier prays before the Battle of Kursk, July 1943.
During the tenth anniversary ceremonies, Robert Peraza pauses at his son's name on the 9/11 Memorial.
Brazilian violinist Diero Frazao Torquato plays at teacher John Evandro de Silva's funeral. De Silva introduced music to Torquato, which gave him an escape from poverty.
A monk prays for an elderly man who passed away while awaiting a train in Shanxi Taiyuan, China.
Victim Hhaing The Yu cries in the aftermath of 2008's Cyclone Nargis in the capital of Myanmar.
During protests against austerity in Bucharest, a Romanian child hands a heart-shaped balloon to riot police.
A flower is planted on the bayonets of Pentagon guards during a protest against the Vietnam War by Jane Rose Kasmir on October 21, 1967.
Teary eyed 8-year-old Christian accepts a U.S. flag from his fallen father Marc Golcyznski's casket.
A boy carries his dog through flood waters caused by tropical storm Trami in Paranaque city, Metro Manila.
A homeless man sits besides three fashionable girls, showing the tragic realities between the poverty-stricken and those of higher classes in New York.
A courageous fireman rescues a girl from a burning apartment building.
A daughter kisses her mother on the cheek. Both were victims of an acid attack by a Muslim man.
A beautiful Ethiopian tribes boy.
This photo taken on August 7, 1930 shows the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, two black men accused of raping a white girl.
A South Vietnamese general executing a Viet Cong officer in the Tet Offensive.
On the first day of Eid al-Adha , a Syrian refugee boy points a toy pistol at a man dressed as Mickey Mouse at a park in Beirut.
Medal winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos give black power salutes at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico.
A German WWII prisoner father is reunited with his daughter after being released from the Soviet Union. They have not seen each other since the daughter was only one year old.
An orphaned Chinese baby crying on a Shanghai train station after Japanese bombings in 1937.
