The first hello

efore doing humanitarian photography, I was tempted to imagine that mothers in developing countries who endured horrific things “on the news” were fundamentally different from me. Maybe, somehow, they just don’t feel things like I do. They’re “used to it,” numbed by their suffering. Maybe they expect less, care less, hope for less, want less, or need less. But as I’ve gotten to know mums all over the world, and captured them and their children with my camera, I’ve come to see that as different as our cultures and contexts might be, the universal gifts and challenges of motherhood