Jonathan D. Woods / msnbc.com

People crowd on a street in downtown New York City early on Nov. 15, after the police cleared Zuccotti Park and protesters were pushed into the side streets.

Msnbc.com's John Makely and Jonathan Woods have been photographing the scenes around Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan since the early hours of Tuesday morning. They gave a few impressions of what they have seen.

Jonathan Woods writes:

I got here around 3 a.m. ET and I really didn’t know what to expect. The first thing I saw when I walked onto Worth Street was a pile of dozens of bags of trash that the protesters had thrown into the street.

As I walked closer to Zuccotti Park the police presence became overwhelming. The streets surrounding the park were heavily barricaded.

Scuffles between police and protesters were few and far between -- most of those that I did see involved people refusing to get back on the sidewalk.

Jonathan D. Woods / msnbc.com

Police and protesters near Zuccotti Park on Nov. 15.

As I write it's 7.30 a.m. and most people are standing around waiting for somethign to happen. Protesters and press are thinly lining the sidewalks. It's turned into a waiting game.

Looking at Zuccotti Park, with the exception of the police and cleaning crews, if you hadn’t been aware of what transpired here since September 17, you would have no idea there had been a camp there until a few hours ago. It's alarmingly clean, it's spotless.

As New Yorkers made their morning commutes, some were surprised to see the park clear of the protesters. One woman passing by was rejoicing at how clean it was. She kept exclaiming, "It’s beautiful, the park is beautiful!" as she went.

John Makely / msnbc.com

A heavy police presence in lower Manhattan on Nov. 15.

On the opposite side of Zuccotti park, the scene was quite different.

John Makely writes:

Broadway and Pine Street were flooded with protesters who had either fled Zuccotti Park when the police began clearing it or arrived afterwards and could get no closer.  Protesters were standing on NYPD vehicles and sitting in the middle of the intersection.

While the scene wasn't tense there was an expectation that something would happen. Reinforcements beefed up the NYPD ranks and they warned those within earshot to clear out. Violent pushing, shoving and some punching later and the protesters were back on the sidewalk. Then a projectile was thrown from the crowd toward the police and about 30 seconds later there was a surge into the sidewalk by about 20 officers to attempt to catch whoever had thrown the object.

Jonathan D. Woods / msnbc.com

Police clear protesters from the area around Zuccotti Park on Nov. 15.

Tense expressions on the NYPD and vocal rants from the protesters, some taunting, "The more you attack us the stronger we get", some trying to find common ground. One officer yelled back "Shut your mouth!"

Police opened up a sidewalk leading to Zuccotti Park, which now stands freshly washed, with new barricades and a lot more officers.

John Makely / msnbc.com

NYPD officers surround Zuccotti park after cleaning crews finished removing tents and power-washing the plaza.

Jonathan D. Woods / msnbc.com

Members of the press, including John Makely of msnbc.com, center, work alongside tired protesters near Zuccotti Park early on Nov. 15.

Read our latest news story on the clearance of Zuccotti Park and see more coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement on PhotoBlog.

Photographers and journalists are often criticized for flying in to a distant, foreign environment and telling a story in a way that makes people appear exotic, rather than empathizing with them. 'My name is Filda Adoch', a documentary project by the Italian photographer Martina Bacigalupo, is an example of a powerful, compassionate alternative.

President Barack Obama recently ordered up to 100 U.S. military trainers into central Africa to help combat the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a band of rebels behind a campaign of murder, rape and kidnapping that has plagued northern Uganda for 20 years. Ugandan government troops have also been accused of committing human rights abuses during the conflict.

Filda Adoch is one of those most affected by the violence from both sides. The 53 year old Ugandan has suffered the loss of a son, two husbands, and her own leg which was amputated after she stepped on a landmine. Through it all, she has displayed extraordinary spirit and endurance, continuing to take care of her five children, two godsons, ten grandchildren, her mother and a brother. 

Martina Bacigalupo / Agence VU via Aurora Photos

"Here I am carrying the firewood home but it looks as if the firewood on my head is something like wings that make me fly in the sky."
Filda Adoch pictured in Along Village, Gulu District, Uganda, in May 2010.

Martina Bacigalupo spoke with msnbc.com at the Visa pour l'image photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France, where her work was exhibited in September. "The project is an encounter between me and Filda," she explained, "and between our two worlds. I spent three weeks with Filda, staying in her village. The simple idea I had was to collaborate with her."

"When you first arrive in a place everything is new and amazing. People are extraordinary. You tend to project yourself on to things -- your ideas, your culture -- and exaggerate things. It becomes about you, it's not about the people who are your subjects."

"I tried to get beyond that. I wanted to say 'I exist, with my background, my culture, my ideas, my experience of this place. Let me put this together in my photography. Let me put it in front of you - Filda - give it to you, and then you give something back to me.’"

"Each time I took pictures, the following day I would take them to Filda. She was involved in the editing -- sometimes she would look at a picture and say 'no, this is not me'. The images are my choice, but I listened to her. There's a picture with the cow and the chicken, for example. She really wanted this picture to be included.

Martina Bacigalupo / Agence VU via Aurora Photos

"This is a very true picture because everybody is in it, even the chicken. It's very clear."
Filda Adoch with some of her family in Along Village, Gulu District, Uganda, in January 2011.

As we watched people crowd around the exhibit in France, peering intently at Adoch's words beneath the pictures, I asked Bacigalupo how she thought Adoch would react to the scene. "She will laugh when she sees pictures of this! She'll see a bunch of white people looking at her life."

"But I remember our first meeting. 'Go and tell my story,' she said to me. If people looking at the pictures feel a connection with Filda, that is success to me."

And how did the photographer herself feel to see the work exhibited?

"It was only when I looked at the pictures on the wall myself that I realized there are not many pictures where you notice that Filda's leg is missing. She doesn't cry about her lost leg, she doesn't show it. I was conscious that she was so proud of her body, her strength. She feels strong, she feels beautiful, and it is her beauty that comes across."

See more images in the slideshow: One woman's story of surviving 20 years of conflict in Uganda.

Photographer Martina Bacigalupo is based in Burundi, in the Great Lakes region of Africa. She produced the project with a grant she received as the winner of the Canon Female Photojournalist Award.

Photojournalist Ben Lowy, working with Reportage by Getty Images, arrived in Tripoli today after a long journey from his home in New York. After connecting through Istanbul and Tunis, he landed in Djerba, Tunisia to start his overland route to Libya.

Benjamin Lowy / Reportage by Getty Images for msnbc.com

A Libyan man dances with a rebel Libyan flag in celebration over the perceived fall of Libyan Dictator Mommar Gaddafi on Aug. 24, in Zintan, Libya.

While the distance between Djerba and Tripoli in Libya can be covered in only 200 miles, his vehicle traveled a longer, more southerly route to avoid dangerous areas, taking seven hours which included switching vehicles at the border between the two countries.

Lowy spent most of the trip sleeping, except when a plane landed on the highway in front of their vehicle. This wasn't a small plane either -- it was a jet big enough to hold around 100 people.

Benjamin Lowy / Reportage by Getty Images for msnbc.com

A pair of Libyan passengers sit under the tail of an Air Libya plane that landed on a desert highway while on its way to Benghazi on Aug. 24, in Zintan, Libya.

While most travelers usually find arriving at their hotel marks the end of a safe journey, not so for Lowy traveling into a war zone. Reuters is reporting about his hotel:

A half dozen heavily armed rebels had arrived at the Corinthia Hotel in central Tripoli late on Wednesday, saying that they had heard Saadi Gadhafi was there and they intended to search every room for him. "The men ran into the hotel and blocked off access to the elevators as they prepared to search the building room by room," the news agency reported.

A Reuters correspondent at the hotel said later that bursts of gunfire rang out near the hotel later "and a column of smoke rose from the direction of the shooting."

Reuters added: "Foreign journalists who had been trapped for days in the Rixos hotel in the capital were taken to the Corinthia after their release on Wednesday."

Benjamin Lowy / Reportage by Getty Images for msnbc.com

A pair of Libyan rebels sit in a highway checkpoint shack on Aug. 24, in Zintan, Libya.

Lowy transmitted these iPhone images before heading to bed in the only space he could find - on the floor of the lobby of the hotel. He used the Hipstamatic app for iPhone. In an essay he wrote for the Getty Images website following his last trip to Libya this spring, he described why he gravitates at times to a non-professional camera:

While I worked to cover this story in a more traditional sense, I was also drawn to using my iPhone as I have in Afghanistan. Small mobile phone cameras are innocuous and enable a far greater intimacy with a subject. It was a liberating experience; to point and shoot with a small device, unhampered by camera bags full of gear and reacting to the world around me.

…using my iPhone allowed me transmit images from the field, updating my blog like many of the Libyan revolutionaries around me. Embracing this new paradigm of journalism - no middleman, no publisher - I posted images from Libya and gained over 500 followers in a week, regular curious people - Libyans, Americans, Europeans - who bypassed traditional news sources.

It is perhaps fitting that social media has enabled the Arab Spring movement across the Middle East and embraced mobile devices as content gatherers. Is this the future of journalism?

In coming days, look for more of Ben's work from Tripoli as he covers the rebellion against dictator Col. Moammar Gadhafi. Read the latest news from Libya.

Francesco Zizola, NOOR, writes:

In 2009, when reporting from Southern Ethiopia, I promised myself never to cover another famine. Bearing witness to the death of thousands of people, children for the most part, had worn me out. It’s hard to look at pictures like these, but for me they are especially hard to take.

There’s always the risk of falling into the stereotype of an African body – of a child in most cases – worn out by hardship and despair. In the Western countries we are aware of what is happening in Africa, but our souls of privileged citizens are hardly touched by these photographs. For me it’s different, I bring those images and that suffering inside of me for a long time afterwards. They haunt me at night.

Francesco Zizola / NOOR via Redux

In the Lake Turkana area of Kenya, nomadic herdsmen are hit hard by a year-long drought that is creating famine in the area.

The alarm on famine launched this year pushed me to approach the subject once more. The causes of the present crisis have been ascribed in large part to climate change, a topic I have been working on for some time with my colleagues at NOOR.

I took the decision to give it a second try and set off for Northern Kenya, avoiding places besieged by the media circus, like the Dadaab refugee camp, near the border with Somalia. In North-western Kenya, between the Sudanese border and the Ethiopian border, the drought has been claiming many lives among the agro-pastoral communities of the Turkana people, who inhabit the region around Lake Turkana. As I am told, the drought is affecting only part of the region, but such unevenness has triggered another tragedy: livestock-rustling.

Communities badly affected by the drought start looking for new pastures for their goatherds, camels or cattle, attacking and trying to uproot the communities already settled in the occupied areas. It’s a desperate fight for resources, which respects no law and no border.

Luckily, I didn't witness any deaths in the central Turkana district, where I spent nearly two weeks. The drought is severe. Rainfalls have failed for over a year in some areas, in others for five.

Thanks to their nomadic character, the tribal communities living in the region are succeeding in rescuing their livestock, upon which their own survival depends. Unfortunately only the strong can flee from the drought, leaving the weak behind, like children – often malnourished – and the elderly. The survival of the weak is the real emergency. (Translated by Valentina Tordoni)

View more of Zizola's images from northern Kenya.

See more coverage of the drought and famine hitting the Horn of Africa.

Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic appeared before a court in The Hague Friday to hear charges of genocide. Follow the latest developments in the case here, and read a story from a survivor of Bosnia's killing fields here. In the wake of Mladic's arrest, Reuters photographer Damir Sagolj, who served in the Bosnian army during the war of 1992-95, recounted his personal recollections of working in Srebrenica:

"I've been to more than one hundred mass graves, mass funerals and witnessed the long, exhaustive process of victim identification. I've taken pictures of bones found in caves and rivers, dug from mud, recovered from woods and mines or just left by the road.

"Most of these terrible assignments were around the small, end-of-the-road town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.

Damir Sagolj / Reuters, file

One of hundreds of coffins with remains of Bosnian Muslims is taken to a cemetery near Srebrenica, late July 10, 2007. The mass burial of 465 victims of the 1995 massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces was held the following day at a joint cemetery near Srebrenica.

"The international criminal court says that a genocide was committed in Srebrenica in July of 1995 when Bosnian Serb forces massacred thousands of Muslims after the enclave, ironically under U.N. protection as a safe haven, was overrun by an army led by its ruthless commander.

"Ratko Mladic, a typical officer from what used to be the Yugoslav people's army, was the commander of the forces that overran the enclave. He described it as revenge upon the Turks for the events of the early 19th century. Thousands of white Muslim gravestones at the terrifying and extremely sad Srebrenica memorial remain as a symbol of that 'revenge'. Thousands are still missing, their bones hidden in heavy Bosnian soil.

Damir Sagolj / Reuters, file

A woman holds a photo of her missing son as Bosnian Muslim relatives of the victims and survivors of the Srebrenica massacre meet with ex-Dutch peacekeepers in a former U.N base in Potocari on October 17, 2007. A group of Dutch ex-peacekeepers whose mission was to protect civilians in the U.N. safe haven of Srebrenica visited the site and met with survivors and relatives of victims.

"I was in Sarajevo when the news came to us, transmitted over a noisy, primitive radio system. Local reporters from Srebrenica - who would disappear themselves over the next few days - sent the dramatic message that Ratko's troops were entering the town. We all knew it was going to be bad, but still I had no idea of the scale of the tragedy. Yes, the enclave had fallen, but the U.N. were there, so the civilians and prisoners of war should be treated in accordance with the Geneva conventions. How wrong and naive I was!

Damir Sagolj / Reuters, file

A destroyed house is seen from inside a car on December 20, 2007 near the site where the Srebrenica massacre occurred.

"I have never seen Ratko Mladic, I never photographed him, but his bloody signature is written all over my pictures. Every time I would go to another mass grave or a mass funeral of victims of his 'revenge', the face of a man confident he is doing the right thing would come into the frame. Sleeves rolled up, binoculars in his hands as he ordered his artillery 'Don't let them sleep. Make them lose their minds.'

"I will carry the mud from mass graves and the smell of decomposing bodies on my shoes wherever I go. I will continue shooting my Srebrenica pictures on every story of crimes against humanity no matter how far away and how different they may be.

Damir Sagolj / Reuters, file

Bosnian Muslim returnees to Srebrenica arrive for morning prayers on the first day of Eid al-Adha celebrations, December 20, 2007.

"Last week, after more than 15 years on the run, Ratko Mladic was captured in a small village in Serbia. Looking at the pictures of an old man emerging from a Belgrade court – Mladic is almost seventy now – sends chills down my spine. I'm not even sure I want to see him any more, to hear what he has to say. His words from back then were enough, there is not much else to say.

"All that is important can be understood from the pictures – a sea of coffins lined up for the funeral every 11th of July, a wrinkled face of a woman, the only survivor in her family, as she holds a photo of her dead son, bones bulldozed in the mass graves, the names on the memorial…

Damir Sagolj / Reuters, file

A Bosnian Muslim man searches for the name of a killed relative amongst gravestones of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, following morning prayers on the first day of Eid al-Fitr in Srebrenica on October 12, 2007.

"Covering a story like this is not an easy thing to do, no matter how big and important it is. Fifteen years of the same – one could ask 'Does anyone care anymore? How many times can the same story be written?'

"The threshold was raised as the years passed and questions were asked – How many at this mass grave, is it over one hundred? Anything special? A baby skull with a bullet hole, maybe a body impaled on the stake? Only thirty bodies?

"As I went from one atrocity site to another Mladic was still in hiding, raising questions that made my head hurt like hell. He would only appear from time to time on the posters or T-shirts of his supporters – there are people still calling him a hero. That is where reality bites and the pictures get scary – ghosts of victims dancing between white grave marks in our photos are harmless.

Damir Sagolj / Reuters, file

Bosnian Muslim women look through the bars as U.N. chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte arrives for a mass funeral at a cemetery near Srebrenica on July 11, 2007. Families of victims of the Srebrenica massacre gathered to bury more remains in an annual ceremony that has become the main event of their lives since the 1995 atrocity by Bosnian Serb forces.

"The general is in custody now, but, just like these pictures, his 'revenge' remains imprinted in the sad history of a beautiful country.

"Some of the best advice I've ever heard in our profession was to take every assignment as if it had never been done before and
you were the only one to witness it. No matter what year it was – 1995 or 2005 – every time I went to Srebrenica, I had the feeling that I was doing something more that just a regular story.

It is, simply, the biggest story of my life."

Damir Sagolj / Reuters, file

A flower is placed onto the names of the Srebrenica victims as relatives visit their memorial in Potocari, near Srebrenica on October 16, 2007.

See our slideshow: The charges against Ratko Mladic

AP reports: A South African photographer is being honored for helping expose apartheid's brutality to the world with a picture that ended his career.

President Jacob Zuma will today bestow national honors on Sam Nzima for a photograph reminiscent of the "Pieta" he took 35 years ago showing a dying Hector Pieterson, a 13-year-old shot by police during the 1976 Soweto uprising.

Denis Farrell / AP

South African photographer Sam Nzima poses with his iconic photo showing Hector Pieterson, a 13-year-old shot by police during the 1976 Soweto uprising, in Pretoria, South Africa on April 27. Nzima is being honored for helping expose apartheid's brutality to the world with the picture that ended his career because police were so enraged by the attention his photograph drew.

Nzima says the photograph seen around the world "tells the story of what happened. You don't even need a caption to see that something terrible has happened."

In an interview today, Nzima said police were so enraged by the attention his photograph drew, he feared they would kill him. He left Johannesburg and his newspaper to become a businessman in a small eastern South African town.

----

A memorial to Hector Pieterson was erected in the early 1990s in Khumalo Street, Soweto, a few hundred meters from where he was shot. The Hector Pieterson Museum opened on the same site in 2002.

Read a more extensive interview with Sam Nzima.

The winners of the 68th annual Pictures of the Year International competition have been announced. Founded in 1944 and organized by the Missouri School of Journalism, POYi is the oldest and one of the most prestigious photojournalism competitions in the world. Here is a rundown of the major awards:

Adrees Latif of Reuters was named Freelance/Agency Photographer of the Year:

Adrees Latif / Reuters via POYi

Marooned flood victims looking to escape grab the side bars of a hovering Army helicopter which arrived to distribute food supplies in the Muzaffargarh district of Pakistan's Punjab province on August 7, 2010.

Damon Winter of the New York Times was named Newspaper Photographer of the Year:

Damon Winter / The New York Times via POYi

On January 12, 2010 a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck southwestern Haiti killing an estimated two hundred and fifty thousand people, leaving millions homeless and the capital city of Port-au-Prince in ruins. Here, a man lay dead in a makeshift stretcher outside the main hospital.

Fernando Moleres of Panos Pictures and Laif won the World Understanding Award:

Fernando Moleres / Panos Pictures & Laif via POYi

Freetown, Sierra Leone. Ibrahim Sesay is interrogated by prisoners for the disappearance of a pair of slippers at Pademba Central Prison. Ibrahim was accused of stealing a mobile phone at his school. He was arrested in August 2009 and spent eight days at the police station without food. The police report stated he was 19 years old instead of 14, which is how old he says he is. He has been sentenced to 18 months.

Barbara Davidson of the Los Angeles Times won the Community Awareness Award:

Barbara Davidson / The Los Angeles Times via POYi

"I realized I was shot when my leg started burning and I saw holes in my leg. I was just crying, hoping that the ambulance would hurry up and come." Three bullets tore into 10-year-old Erica Miranda's back, knee, and hip while playing basketball outside her home when a young man walked up to a crowded street corner in Compton and pulled out a handgun and started shooting. Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators believe a 17-year-old relative of her stepfather was the intended target. Both males were shot three times and survived. Erica will not be paralyzed, doctors say. But there is significant nerve damage in her right leg.

Steve Winter won the Global Vision Award:

Steve Winter via POYi

Tigers live in perhaps the highest density in Kaziranga National Park of any place in India. In other national parks in India, tigers are in greater peril, but poachers here tend to target the Indian one-horned rhinos instead. Here, a young male emerges from the elephant grass.

In the Editing Division, the Los Angeles Times won the Angus McDougall Overall Excellence in Editing Award.

All of us at msnbc.com are honored to have been awarded third place in the category for best use of photography in an online publication. First place went to latimes.com and second to nytimes.com.

In the Multimedia Division, msnbc.com won another prize: third place in the news category for the story Rhinos: Flight for survival, a collaboration between photographer Ami Vitale, producer Jim Seida and editor Shannon Dell. Watch the video below:

Is that you falling off your bicycle? Is that your neighbor's van on fire, your friend brawling on the street, or your grandmother lying on the curb after a fall?

Michael Wolf / Laif via World Press Photo

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Google Street View.

A Series of Unfortunate Events is a set of 'virtual' photographs taken from Google Street View, with the details of their locations removed. They earned photographer Michael Wolf an Honorable Mention at the World Press Photo awards earlier this month, sparking a fierce online debate. Did the photos belong to Wolf or to Google? Had he 'created' the pictures at all? And how do they fit in to the history of photojournalism?

Michael Wolf / Laif via World Press Photo

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Google Street View.

Wolf himself, in an interview with the British Journal of Photography, expressed surprise at the award.

"I think it's absolutely astounding," he says. "I won First Prize twice in the competition in 2005 and last year, but this honorable mention is worth hundred times more to me because it's such a conceptual leap for the World Press jury to award a prize to someone that photographs virtually. It's mind-blowing."

"I use a tripod and mount the camera, photographing a virtual reality that I see on the screen. It's a real file that I have, I'm not taking a screenshot. I move the camera forward and backward in order to make an exact crop, and that's what makes it my picture. It doesn't belong to Google, because I'm interpreting Google; I'm appropriating Google. If you look at the history of art, there's a long history of appropriation."

Michael Wolf / Laif via World Press Photo

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Google Street View.

Ruth Eichhorn, Director of Photography at GEO, was a member of the jury that awarded the prize. I asked her to respond to the controversy surrounding the pictures.

"Photojournalism today is definitely what photojournalism was 50 years ago: A situation interpreted into a meaningful image", she said.
 
"But something virtual has entered our visual world that we could not even have imagined 10 years ago. Hence, our world has changed in a revolutionary way. You can write about it and you can look at it on your computer, but how to document it with the means of photography? This is, in my opinion documentary photography and this work is smart and creative."
 
"What Michael Wolf did is use photography to chronicle a significant event."

Michael Wolf / Laif via World Press Photo

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Google Street View.

She continued: "The work was recognized in the category 'Contemporary Issues' and not in the category 'Daily Life'. The Contemporary Issue is that Google scans our world and we cannot hide from it. We are not part of an anonymous mass anymore, we are identifiable."
 
"I checked Google Street View immediately when it was available for my street. [My first reaction was] Relief! I was not slipping down the steps of my front door when the Google car drove by. Do I want to be the laughing stock of my friends and neighbours? No, I don't. The poor people in Wolf's images are identifiable, at least to people who know them. Although Google claims nobody is. And who knows what is next? Live streaming? How will this effect our future?"
 
"Pointing out upcoming problems: that is also what journalism is about."

Michael Wolf / Laif via World Press Photo

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Google Street View.

You can read further debate about the photographs at dvafoto here and here, and at greg.org here. Please tell us what you think in the comments section below.



Irish photographer Andrew McConnell was awarded 1st prize in the portrait stories category of this year's World Press Photo contest.

His project The Last Colony is an innovative and highly personal portrayal of the Saharawi people of Western Sahara, a disputed territory in northern Africa. I asked him how and why he took the photographs.

Andrew McConnell / Panos Pictures

Hamdi Jaafar Mohammed, 46, soldier of the Polisario Front. Pictured atop a tank in Tifariti, in Polisario controlled Western Sahara.
'I was born in 1963 in Wagcedhi. During the invasion I was a young boy but I remember what happened. I saw my neighbours being forced to leave, women and children walking and travelling in trucks. The Moroccans intervened in a barbaric way in occupying our cities. I fled with my brothers. My father was fighting to protect people as they were leaving the territory. It took more than one month of walking before we reached the camps. I joined the Polisario and became a fighter at the end of 1981. On my first day as a soldier in the war we came under attack from a Moroccan plane and we were all dispersed. Someone shot at the plane with a normal gun and it came down! The pilot came down in the parachute and we captured him. Everyday something happened. I didn't believe I would die, I know the only one who can kill someone is God, not the Moroccan. I didn't believe that they could kill me or do anything to me, only I have a strong belief in God and God is the only one I am afraid of.'

Q. What inspired you to tell the story of the Saharawi people?

A. Of all the countries in Africa, Western Sahara was always the one that I heard the least about. I read the history and learned how in 1975 the colonists, Spain, were ready to hold a referendum on independence, but Morocco invaded and took control of the country, leading to a war against a Saharawi rebel group, the Polisario Front. I was intrigued that the conflict had never been resolved and shocked to learn that tens of thousands of Saharawis were still languishing in Algerian refugee camps. I thought it was a story that had to be told.

Andrew McConnell / Panos Pictures

Minatu Lanabas Suidat, 25, journalist. Pictured in Tifariti, in Polisario controlled Western Sahara.
'I was born in El Aaiun refugee camp in 1984. I thought when I was a little girl that it was the nicest place in the world because I didn't know anything other than the camps. My childhood was very nice. We played all night, we never had anything to fear, even the darkness. I have worked as a journalist since December 2008 and I have learned a lot of things about my issue. Now I have a lot of chances to fight for my issue through writing and talking about the situation. I think the world has betrayed the Polisario. The Polisario wanted peace and had faith in the process and they gave a lot for the chance to create peace but I think the world didn't appreciate that, especially the UN and Morocco. The people are ready to sacrifice themselves for independence. The ceasefire had advantages in that the Polisario had the chance to organise everything in the camps and now the people are educated and we understand democracy but the negative is we are still here, without land, and relying on international aid. I hope the Saharawi will have the chance for a referendum to decide their future, that's all. I hope the chance comes through peace.'

Q. Can you explain the technique you used for the portraits?

A. I shot everything at night and I used an LED video light to illuminate the subject for a short time while using long exposures, 10 or 20 seconds, to allow the detail of the desert and sky to come through.

Andrew McConnell / Panos Pictures

Brahim Mohamed Fadin, 17. Pictured in sand dunes near Smara refugee camp, Algeria.
'I don't like to be in the refugee camps. I know that the Algerians receive us and help us for many years but I want to be free in my own country. I am in High School in Algeria and Saharawis always get the best grades there. We are learning for our people, we learn to spread our history and in Algeria we can do that. I'm studying maths and my goal is to be an engineer. I wish I could help my country, it needs a lot of specialists. I would rather live in the camps than live under Moroccan control.'

I wanted the images to have a strong message and to relate the injustice I saw to the outside world. I wanted to give a sense that this is one long night for the Saharawis, one lasting 35 years. To show very little of the land emphasizes that they are landless, and very simply by lighting them in the darkness I was saying "Look! These people are here!" I took statements from every subject, hoping to give a voice to the voiceless. Their words are a grim condemnation of international efforts in Western Sahara. Finally I wanted the viewer to see what I had seen: A people utterly forgotten, abandoned, out of the world's consciousness; a people as ghosts.

Andrew McConnell / Panos Pictures

Mohamed Salem Ali, 18, water seller. Pictured in Dakhla refugee camp, Algeria.
'I was born in Dakhla. It is beautiful here, I have many friends. Three times a week I prepare the donkey early in the morning at 6am and walk for one hour to the well. I fill ten containers using rope, it's deep and I get tired. It's takes two hours coming back, when I arrive home I feed the donkey and rest. The water from the well is sweet and people like to use it to make tea and to cook grains and sometimes even to drink it when there is no other water.'

Q. Whose story most affected you?

A. My guide in Polisario-controlled Western Sahara was an old soldier called Malainin Aomar. He knew the desert like the back of his hand and was truly at one with the land. He would look for the smallest signs to get his bearings, maybe a rock or a bush, and with knowledge that had been built up over many years he would guide our jeep through the endless desert. Our lives were basically in his hands; in the height of the midday sun he would direct us to an outcrop of rock that offered shade and at night he would find Bedouins who would feed us and give us a place to sleep.

Andrew McConnell / Panos Pictures

Malainin Aomar, 66, soldier of the Polisario Front. Pictured watching the Moroccan wall near Auserd, in Polisario controlled Western Sahara.
'I was born in Auserd in 1953. Since I was a little boy I studied the Koran and I learnt the difference between good and bad. In August 1974 I joined the Polisario Front. I joined because they were an organisation fighting for the liberation of Western Sahara which had been occupied by the Spanish for almost 100 years. I believed in the Polisario's ideals. In September 1975 Spain began to leave all their bases and release the Saharawi soldiers. Polisario knew something was happening and began to prepare for a new kind of conflict. We never trusted Spain. There was a big meeting between all the countries and Algeria and Libya supported independence for Western Sahara, but something went wrong. Then we knew on 14th November 1975 Spain signed the Triple Agreement with Morocco and Mauritania to divide up our land. For me the only future is the liberation of my country and my people. If we don't have independence there is no future, all is dark. We have to go back to war, we don't like war but we have to finish this situation, we have been waiting for 34 years, it's enough.'

I photographed him watching the Moroccan wall from an old look-out point as the sun set and dark clouds gathered overhead. That night I interviewed him about his life and a deep sadness came over him. He told me that the look-out point where I had photographed him looked towards Auserd, the town where he was born. It was only a few miles away but on the other side of the wall and he had not been able to go there for 30 years. He hadn't seen his brother and many of his relatives in all that time. As he spoke his sadness gave way to anger and he questioned the decision to stop the war with Morocco and told me he was ready to fight again.

You can see more images from The Last Colony at Panos Pictures and read more about the situation in Western Sahara at Human Rights Watch.

Ron Haviv, one of several photojournalists working in Cairo whom we've been following this week, witnessed the crowd's reaction to Pres. Hosni Mubarak's speech announcing again that he was not stepping down, but handing power to his vice president. "Not speaking Arabic...I was trying to understand what he was saying by reading faces."

Ron Haviv / VII

Egyptians gather in Tahir Square and celebrate based on rumors that President Mubarak will step down.

In anticipation of the speech, protesters were celebrating in the square (shown above). But as the speech started, despite a crowd of tens of thousands, the square turned remarkably quiet. The tone of the speech was soon clear to him as he saw dismay, disappointment and even tears in the eyes of the crowd as they watched. "The look of utter surprise...by that point, they had really convinced themselves that Mubarek would say he was going to leave."

After the speech, the noise and anger swelled. Shoes were held up, an insult in the Arab world, and the crowd quickly returned to the chants of the past two weeks of protests calling for regime change.

Ron Haviv / VII

Egyptians gather in Tahir Square and react to President Mubarak's speech.

As he left the square to file his images, he sensed in the crowd a nervous anticipation for tomorrow. "People were saying that the speech is probably going to inflame both sides. They felt the Mubarak regime was trying to get them to be violent to discredit them...and they don't know if they're going to be able to control everyone to be peaceful." Cell phones started ringing, calling protesters back to guard their neighborhoods, fearing a return to the violence that occurred late last week.

Earlier in the day, Haviv recalled a bright moment. "It very rarely rains in Cairo. Today the skies opened up for a few moments. People were looking at this as a blessing from God. They started to pray and chant. They really thought that this was a sign that something good was going to happen."

See images from three weeks of protests

Photojournalist David Degner and journalist Egyptian Mohamed Abdelfattah just returned from Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt where tens of thousands of anti-democracy protesters are gathered asking for President Hosni Mubarak to step down from power.

The journalists were concerned about staying in square because of the intense crowding. “It’s really overcrowded, it feels like there is no oxygen in the air.”

Mohamed was working as a videographer, covering the protests in Alexandria. But three days ago, he traveled to Cairo because he wanted to be part of history, to see the movement there in person.

“It’s a type of dream to see...a very amazing show of people power in recent weeks in a really modern and civilized way.”

He continued, "This type of revolution is the kind that we only hear about in history textbooks outside of Egypt…it’s surreal to us."

Of the mood in the square, he says: "You see all of Egypt in front of you – people from all sects and all types of workers.. It's really like a beautiful painting, you can’t speak about it, you just watch. That’s the kind of shock we are in."

David Degner / IncendiaryImage.com

Egyptian journalist turned protester Mohamed Abdelfattah

Following Pres. Hosni Mubarak's latest announcement saying he is going to remain as president but transfer power to his vice president Omar Suleiman, Egyptian Nevine Zaki expresses some of the outrage felt by the protest movement via Twitter:

How can u play with feelings like this? they should have a special feature 4 us in z Guiness Records about how heartless our government is!

Yup he poured more gasoline unto the fire!

Ron Haviv for msnbc.com

Photojournalist Ron Haviv texts from Tahrir Square: The mood is a mix of tense anticipation as news moves through the square – Mubarak will speak soon and most likely resign but the next steps are already on people’s mind – military or civilian and then what. But for now it seems people will be happy to celebrate the new beginning if and when it happens.

After hearing from several photojournalists that they didn't want to leave the square long enough to file images via their laptops from hotel or other Wifi connections for fear of missing news, I started asking them to send in cell phone images to fill the gap. He used his iPhone to capture this image.

Watch live video from Tahrir Square

View images from three weeks of protests