In 1949, LIFE magazine sent famed photographer Nina Leen to document the daily life of a sassy troupe of young women who had run off and joined the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, Fla. What developed was a portrait of a sisterhood formed over acrobatics that mixed high-flying wire acts with fashionable high-waisted shorts. Sarasota was once considered “the home of the American circus”. Here: an aerialist smoking while rehearsing for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Sarasota, FL in 1949. (Photo By Nina Leen/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Members of Brazil's Movimento dos Sem-Teto (Roofless Movement) stand in the hallway of one of the 11 empty buildings that the movement took over recently, in the centre of Sao Paulo, November 6, 2012. According to City Hall, there are some 400,000 people in need of stable housing, including the 4,000 families of the Roofless Movement who are squatting in abandoned or vacant buildings that range from apartment blocks to hotels, in Sao Paulo, the largest city in South America. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

“Hatem Moussa joined The Associated Press as a photojournalist in 1998. Since then, the Gaza City-based Moussa has covered repeated rounds of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in Gaza, including the wars of 2008-9, 2012 and 2014”. – Associated Press. Photo: A Palestinian youth jumps into the Mediterranean sea on the beach at the port of Gaza City, Gaza, Monday, August 27, 2012. (Photo by Hatem Moussa/AP Photo)

Buses are stranded in a flooded street in Fuzhou, Fujian province, July 24, 2014. Typhoon Matmo hit Taiwan on Wednesday, bringing heavy rain and strong winds, shutting financial markets and schools. It passed the island and headed into China, downgraded from typhoon to tropical storm. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Fireworks explode over a floating Christmas tree in Lagoa Lake in Rio de Janeiro. (Photo by Victor R. Caivano/Associated Press)

British model Jean Shrimpton at London Airport (now Heathrow), 5th June 1967. (Photo by Dove/Express/Getty Images)

A Sphynx cat is held by its owner at the WCF International Cat Show in Hanoi, Vietnam, 02 April 2023. The two-day event opened on 01 April at the Van Ho Exhibition Centre in Hanoi. (Photo by Luong Thai Linh/EPA)

A devotee immerses an idol of elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha in an artificial pond during Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India on September 20, 2023. (Photo by Aditya/NurPhoto/Rex Features/Shutterstock)