For 20 years, Joann Biondi worked as a freelance writer. Then one day she adopted a kitten that had been tossed in a garbage can and left for dead. That kitten had an unusual quirk; he liked to wear clothes and pose for the camera. So Joann started shooting, and then she got serious about photography. Fast forward four years and that kitten is now Lorenzo the Cat, a feline art photography project that has gotten both the cat and the photographer a lot of attention; gallery shows, museum exhibits, and stories in major media outlets throughout the world. Amid it all Lorenzo has remained a mellow dude who still likes to roll around in the dirt, chase lizards, and knock things off the kitchen counter when his food bowl is empty.

In this November 18, 2014 photo, Murshida, 12, sits on the lap of her mother Marjina as the train leaves for their village in West Bengal, at a railway station in New Delhi, India. Six months ago, Marjina stepped off a train in New Delhi with her two children, hoping to find a better life after her husband abandoned them without so much as a goodbye. The family spent their days at a landfill picking through other people’s garbage to find salvageable bits to resell or recycle. After six months of poverty, illness and shame, they returned to that train station in New Delhi, headed back to an uncertain future to their hometown in West Bengal. (Photo by Altaf Qadri/AP Photo)

In this August 24, 2018 photo, Changlair Aristide pauses for a portrait, wearing his protective clothing, including an old U.N. peacekeeper's jacket he found in the trash, before scavenging the Truitier landfill in the Cite Soleil slum of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Before 2004, Aristide recalled having enough money to splurge on shoes, T-shirts and pants, but this year he could not buy his kids anything new for the school year. “Life is like that, up and down”, Aristide said. “They'll go to school anyway, even if I have to sell my pig. I love them”. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo)

“Environmental Migrants: The Last Illusion” by photographer Alessandro Grassani, documents the life of people in Kenya, Mongolia and Bangladesh who migrate to escape environmental stresses to the city of their own countries in hopes for a better life. Here: Asia, Mongolia, March 27, 2011. A view of Ulaan Baator over the shoulder of a slumbering drunk. Alcoholism is a huge problem in the city, home to almost half of Mongolia's people. The capital's population has doubled in the past two years. High levels of unemployment and poverty await herders who abandon rural areas and arrive in the city, illiterate and untrained in any skills necessary for urban jobs. (Photo by Alessandro Grassani)

Felipe Dana discovered photography at age 15 when he started working as an assistant for event and commercial photographers. At the close of 2009, he decided to focus his career solely on photojournalism. Dana has focused his work on documenting the consequences of social changes in slums due to upcoming major sports events scheduled for 2014 and 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, where he currently lives and works as a staff photographer for The Associated Press. Photo: A model wears a creation from the Triya summer collection during Fashion Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, April 19, 2013. (Photo by Felipe Dana/AP Photo)

Performers in costume perform in the rain during the parade on the second day of the Notting Hill Carnival in west London on August 31, 2015. Nearly one million people are expected by the organizers Sunday and Monday in the streets of west London's Notting Hill to celebrate Caribbean culture at a carnival considered the largest street demonstration in Europe. The Notting Hill Carnival started in the 1960s, when the area had a large population of immigrants recently arrived from the Caribbean and was notorious for its slums – a far cry from today when it is one of London's most expensive places to live. (Photo by Leon Neal/AFP Photo)

People search for shells on a beach in Sittwe, Rakhine State, Myanmar, 17 September 2020. International Coastal Cleanup Day is observed annually on the third Saturday of September and will occur on 19 September this year. (Photo by Nyunt Win/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Iraqi teenagers swim in waste water from the nearby Tuweitha nuclear facility near Baghdad, Iraq on May 28, 2003. Iraqis are consuming contaminated water unaware of the dangerous pollutants that can cause severe ill health. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)