The most dangerous nation in the world or the most resilient?

According to a study by the World Bank about 1.4 billion people around the world are living on less than $1.25 per day income.

I have often toyed with the idea of a photography as a kind of proof of existence, as witness to a place, a person at a certain time in both ones own life and theirs.

I learnt today that Larry passed away and my heart has been sinking since. These photographs are all I have to honor the memory of a man that once lived in the Arbor Cottages on highway 17 in Savannah, Georgia in 2011 and shared with me some moments and some words, both of which I will keep close to my heart forever.

I've been working on editing my photos from this winter and I've been realizing how emotionally overwhelmed I was when I was shooting at the Edhi Center in Islamabad. I went in there initially to spend time with and photograph the orphans at the center but I found myself even more intrigued by the dozens of older women that had found shelter there, many handicapped, some mentally ill and others perfectly healthy. Almost all had been thrown out of their homes or abandoned by family members, a phenomena I had always associated with the West before this, convinced that strong family values meant extreme loyalty to kin in Southeast Asian tradition. The stories I came across were heartbreaking and sometimes hard to digest. I found as in all who have suffered loss, more hope than I see in the world myself and ended up photographing this sense of community, of survival and of living for the day.

Abandoned newborns at the Edhi Center in Islamabad. Edhi has widely advertised and urged people to leave unwanted babies in the dispensary to discourage the common practice of killing abandoned infants.

A little boy at the Edhi Center points his toy camera at me. I wish more children had the opportunity to pursue the arts and to bring the change the country needs.

An old woman, recently abandoned by her family at the Edhi Center weeps for home. It is not an uncommon occurrence for family members to get rid of their elderly because of their handicap, for greed of inheritance or just because of the liability.

This photograph is perhaps the epitome of how the West perceives Pakistan. Context is everything when handling a lens. This was taken at a protest against the government on the pressing issue of Missing Persons. The woman in the photograph is a tired protester and in her background is the Parliament House guarded by the police, concrete and barbed wire. Residents of Islamabad are now used to driving through military check-points although the psychological effects of such an everyday evasion are not addressed. We are a resilient nation, no doubt.

Food inflation in Pakistan has lead to an increase in food queues at shrines such as Bari Imam where the rich offer food for the poor in order to have their wishes fulfilled. Pakistan has grown increasingly unstable both politically and economically in the last few years with price hikes, electric/gas shortages on top of the devastation caused by the recent floods and the Military offensive in its northwest region.

A little boy holds a picture of his father at a protest against Missing Persons in Islamabad.