The Washington Post featured Andrea Bruce's brilliant work in a slideshow titled China's Great Divider of Sexes: Poverty. Andrea's photograph above of Chen Maiya preparing breakfast for her neighbors is Vermeer-like in its luminosity. Deservedly, this slideshow feature received an award in the Best of Photojournalism 2007 (Feature Photo Gallery).
Andrea Bruce graduated with a journalism degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and joined the staff of the Washington Post, where she began to chronicle the world's most troubled areas. Her pictures from the Iraq War have been published widely and have garnered international acclaim.
The accompanying article by Maureen Fan reports on Dacitan, a village in the foothills of China's poorest provinces, run almost entirely by women, mothers who work the fields while their husbands are away. Dacitlan is a Muslim village populated by members of the ethnic Hui minority, and is a stark example of the cost of China's blistering economic growth.
The combination of Andrea's slideshow and Maureen's article makes for a fascinating read.
The Washington Post's China's Divider slideshow.
The Washington Post's China's Divider article.