For Vogue's 125th birthday celebration, we created an interactive documentary project to celebrate the extraordinary diversity of style, enterprise, and values that define us today. 10 phographers, 10 photo essays.
A water protector preparing to join Honor the Earth’s spiritual ride at Oceti Sakowin Camp near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.
Standing Rock
Alessandra Sanguinetti's photo essay capturing the powerful women who led and sustained the Standing Rock protests. These women came to Standing Rock to stop a pipeline and they forced the world to pay attention.
Photographed by:
Alessandra Sanguinetti
"I decided to give it my all." Prairie McLaughlin of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe at Sacred Stone Camp.
Inside a yurt at Oceti Sakowin camp.
At Oceti Sakowin Camp.
Left: Cierra, from the Comanche Nation in Oklahoma, after a prayer ceremony and direct action to stop the pipeline; Right: Tara Houska is a citizen of Couchiching First Nation, a tribal attorney, the national campaigns director of Honor the Earth, and cofounder of NotYourMascots.org.
Aztec dancers after a prayer ceremony at Oceti Sakowin Camp.
Salina Zazueta-Beltrán, Isabella Ferrada, and Victoria Valenzuela in East Hollywood.
Latinas in L.A.
Stefan Ruiz documented young women who honor their Chicano history through their style, hair, and makeup. Across the Southwest, and especially in Los Angeles, retro references have long been an element of Latina style. But these throwback looks are not merely fashion, they pay homage to the tumultuous '70s, '80s and '90s; a crucial time for the Latino community in L.A., when gang violence derailed and cut short the lives of many.
Stefan Ruiz
Isabella Ferrada is an artist, model and aspiring cinematographer. Her makeup and style is a mix of inspiration from drag culture, her mother and aunts in the 1980s and 90s.
From left to right: Maya Martinez, Dorys “Dee”, Dianna Araniva, Gabriela Medina. Dorys grew up in South Central L.A.; a mother of three (her eldest serves in the US Army), she founded a clothing company called DXCollective two years ago as an artistic outlet: the designs incorporate her love for graffiti, tattoo art and Los Angeles/Chicano culture.
Maritza Amezcua and Sailor Gonzales have known each other since middle school.
Ofelia Esparza and her daughter Rosanna Esparza Ahrens in front of their home in East Los Angeles. Rosanna, the fifth of nine children, is an artist and graphic designer who runs Tonalli Studio with her mother. Ofelia has lived in this neighborhood all of her life: her mother originally lived in this house, and it is four blocks from where Ofelia was born, and across the street from where she attended middle school.
Theodore Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.
Amber Rose Comacho poses in front of a shrine for La Virgen de Guadalupe in the parking lot of El Mercado de Los Angeles in Boyle Heights.
Wendy McCune and her husband, Mike, co-own Ocean Swell Ventures, which plans custom outings like surfing, stand-up paddling, and hunting and fishing for tourists.
Alaskan Fisherwomen
Evgenia Arbugaeva captured the community and grit of female salmon fishers in Homer, Alaska. For these women, braving the cold and raging sea is not just a job—it’s a way of life.
Evgenia Arbugaeva
A houseboat in Homer has earned the nickname the “pirate ship” for its distinct look.
Amanda Callahan fulfilled a childhood dream of growing her own food when she began to run a small farm with her husband in Homer.
Margo Reveil at the oyster farm she runs with her husband, Frank, in Jakolof Bay. Margo and Frank and their two sons sailed into Homer the summer of 2012, after three years sailing the Pacific.
Left: Inside the Salmon Sisters’s fishing boat, the Stanley K. Right: Ariel Gingrich hangs nets at Net Alley, in Homer.
Heartland
Daniel Arnold returned to his middle-America roots with a cross country road trip through the rust belt capturing the Midwestern women who set the tone and often are the strongest presence in male dominated fields. “From what angle does it become apparent ,” says Arnold, “that that the most powerful figure in a room full of burly farmers is the woman refilling their coffee?”
Daniel Arnold
National Finals Rodeo Flag Girls at the Wrangler NFR opening ceremonies.
Miss Rodeo Queen
Every year since 1955, young women have come together from across the country donning polished boots and their best fringed chaps to compete in the Miss Rodeo America pageant in hopes of winning a scholarship to further their education and the Black Hills Gold crown.
Charlie Engman
Miss Rodeo North Dakota, Megan Haag, at the PRCA Awards Banquet.
Miss Rodeo America contestants heading to the horsemanship interviews.
Left: Miss Rodeo Oregon, Katie Schrock, at Miss Rodeo America’s horsemanship interviews and fashion show rehearsals. Right: Miss Rodeo Arizona, Alanna Hamilton, and Miss Rodeo Oregon, Katie Schrock, waiting for their turn at the horsemanship interviews.
Lyric Harris, a 19-year-old student at Towson University, prays at a Baltimore mosque.
Muslim Life
We sent photographer Lynsey Addario to capture the daily routines of Muslim women in the Baltimore area. These images were taken just as Donald Trump was elected; his campaign's Islamophobic rhetoric was fresh in people’s minds, but his “Muslim ban,” and the wave of protests it sparked were not yet a reality.
Lynsey Addario
Women praying at the Diyanet Center.
Left: Instructor Samiyah Mustafa watches over Myriam Diakhite during a self-defense class at the Islamic Center of Maryland. Right: Zainab Chaudry, spokeswoman and Maryland outreach manager for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C.
Holly Gobelez, at home in Glenn Dale, Maryland. Gobelez is an actress and mother from upstate New York who converted to Islam just after college.
A group of women walks toward the mosque at the Diyanet Center of America.
Lyric Harris distributing meals to the homeless in Baltimore with her husband, a Chad-born American citizen who is now an ROTC cadet.
Left: U.S. Army Specialist Catherine Davis, Explosive Ordnance Disposal; Right: U.S. Army Private First Class Brittany Mikos is currently the only female on her team.
Armed Forces
The brave faces of the new women warriors, shot one year after the ban was lifted. For the first time, women are driving tanks, firing mortars, leading infantry into direct combat and serving in elite special forces.
Jackie Nickerson
U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major Teresa Duncan is the senior enlisted adviser for 1,200 soldiers in the military police battalion. She has served for 26 years.
U.S. Army Reserves Sergeant Kawaiola Nahale is a breast-cancer survivor; member of the Army Wounded Warrior Team; and a competitive swimmer who has won gold, silver, and bronze medals from various Warrior Games events.
Left: Master-at-Arms 2nd Class Tamika High joined the Navy with her twin sister and reported to boot camp on their 18th birthday. Right: U.S. Airforce Airman 1st Class Sarah Crandall is an avid drummer who plays for her church (and herself, in her spare time).
Barbara L. Brown, chief of the Strategic Implementation Office in the Space Center’s Exploration Research and Technology Program.
NASA
A documentation of the professional lives of the women working at the Kennedy Space Center within the context of their surreal, male-dominated industry. From launch directors to mechanical engineers and lead scientists, the women reflect on the milestones they have overcome and their excitement toward furthering space exploration.
Jonas Bendiksen
Jenny Lyons, chief of the Fleet and Systems Management Division in the Launch Services Program.
Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Launch Director, Ground Systems Development and Operations Program, in front of a mural of NASA milestones
Alicia Mendoza-Hill, Mission Integration Manager, Flight Projects Office, Launch Services Program.
Barbara Brown, Chief of the Strategic Implementation Office in the Exploration Research and Technology Programs. Photographed at the cryogenics test facility.
21st Century Family
Cass Bird is known in the fashion world for her uniquely intimate, humorous, and complicit portraits of the famous and the beautiful. In the depictions of her children and her partner, these qualities are present in the extreme: Family life in all of its messy, wacky, repetitive, emotional wildness has never looked more riveting and gorgeous.
Cass Bird
Anabaptists
Bella Newman's exploration of the nearby Mennonite communities of Martinsburg and Lancaster that she grew up near in Pennsylvania. While the very act of posing for a picture tests the limits of piety and modesty for certain Mennonites, it's a far pendulum swing from a society accustomed to selfies and self-promotion.
Bella Newman
Here, the women exist just outside the frame, the fruits of their labor ripening on the clotheslines. “It’s almost like a line of clouds in the sky,” Newman says.
A Mennonite girl stands in front of the family van, the only automobile in the series. For Newman, the scene is a spin on the road-trip memento, “when people would take a picture in front of their car and the landscape, with the sun flares.”
Miss Liberia US - Gboea Flumo - Fort Washington, MD
Pageant Queens
For this photo essay, photographer Benjamin Rasmussen found more than 25 beauty pageants held by immigrant communities throughout the United States. From Miss India Florida to Miss Liberia US, resplendent national dress is in every case gloriously on display, and each community practices their own unique take on such an American institution.
Benjamin Rasmussen
Miss Asia USA - Juri Watanabe - Los Angeles, CA
Miss India Florida - Ritika Singh - Fort Lauderdale, FL
Left: Miss Korea USA - Jasmine Cho - Los Angeles, CA. Right: Miss Philippines USA - Kalea Pitel - Glendale, CA.
Miss Nigeria USA - Lola Abeni Adeoye - Bowie, MD
Nina Meyers, Brianna Gaulding, Jordan Triplett, and LaMani Adkins photographed at one of Spelman College’s tennis courts.
Alpha Kappa Alpha
Mayan Toledano met and photographed members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first sorority for African-American women. With a membership that’s more than 290,000 strong and spans three generations and multiple continents, the sisterhood has an impressive reach. And though it’s easy to be distracted by the mythology of sororities—the clandestine initiation ceremonies, the college rivalries—the work that these women have quietly been doing in their communities for more than a century can’t be ignored, whether it be raising awareness for mental health on campus, building schools in South Africa, or lobbying for civil rights in Congress, as they did as early as 1938.
Mayan Toledano
Jillian Woodard, a former cheerleader, with the Morehouse College cheerleaders at a home game versus Benedict College.
From left: Sky Myers, LaMani Adkins, Josee Muldrew, Jordan Triplett, Nina Meyers, Kandlar Rhodes, Brianna Gaulding, and Kourtney Jones at the Wellness Center locker room at Spelman College.
Founders’ Day.
