Ned Hardy

Outside of the Headquarters of National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 1914

In an era when women were rallying, marching, and risking arrest to win the right to vote, here was a group—led and largely staffed by women—fighting fiercely to preserve the status quo. The building itself was unassuming, yet from its doors poured pamphlets, petitions, and editorials warning of the dangers women’s suffrage would supposedly bring: a disruption of social order, the decline of the family, and chaos in politics. Signs and banners would have declared the group’s purpose in bold letters, standing as both a literal and symbolic barrier to progress.

Russian conscript with his family before being deployed to the front, Karachev, Bryansk, Russia, 1943.

Karachev, Bryansk Oblast, 1943. A Russian conscript holds his family like he’s trying to memorize them by touch.

He’s not crying. He can’t afford to. His face is clenched, eyes fixed on something just beyond the frame—something far off and final. War. It’s already reached him. It’s there in the weight of the uniform on his back, the roughness of the wool, the burn of the sun on his neck. But mostly, it’s in the way his mother breaks against him. Her face twisted in a cry too deep for sound. She’s holding him like a lifeline, like a dam about to burst, like if she lets go for even a second the entire world will crack in two.