The Rio de Janeiro Olympics kick off on August 5 for some two weeks of competitive games drawing athletes as well as audiences from around the world. As they prepare to cover the event, Reuters photographers look back on their favourite pictures from past Olympics where they captured the action on the ground as well as the participants' tears and joy that followed. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Vanessa, thirty-five, had three children with an abusive husband. She “lost her mind, started doing heroin”, after losing the children, who were taken away and given to her mother. The drugs led to homelessness and prostitution. She grew up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, but now spends her time in Hunts Point, “trying to survive everyday. Just doing whatever it takes”.

The moon rises behind Reunion Tower in downtown Dallas, Sunday evening, November 13, 2016. On Monday the supermoon will be the closest full moon to earth since 1948, and it won't be as close again until 2034. (Photo by Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News via AP Photo)

English reality television personality and country music singer Megan Elizabeth McKenna is seen at Soho House on May 24, 2018 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Splash News and Pictures)

An inmate covers his head as he passes the time inside Quezon City Jail in Manila, Philippines October 19, 2016. Nearly 2,300 drug users and dealers have been killed in police operations or by suspected vigilantes since Duterte took office on June 30, according to the Philippines police. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

Australian model Shanina Shaik attends the Interview x Equinox party during NYFW on February 7, 2024. (Photo by Rupert Ramsay/BFA.com)

In a July 14, 1967 file photo, left, National Guardsmen make their way along Market Street in Newark, N.J, after an evening of deadly rioting and looting in what came to be known as the Newark riots. In a June 16, 2017 photo, right, an ambulance drives on the same block 50 years later. (Photo by AP Photo/File, left; Julio Cortez, right)

A woman falls to the beach after she was attacked by three white women segregationists, when she attempted a wade-in with several African American and white desegregationist demonstrators, June 23, 1964, St. Augustine Beach, Fla. The people in the photo are unidentified. (Photo by AP Photo/JK)