 I'm often asked about being a woman photographer, what's it like for me, and how does my gender affect my work? And now it may sound peculiar, but my answer to that is that in my work I am a photographer first and a woman second. I'll give you an example. I was eight months pregnant with my daughter when I went up to a mountain village, a remote village of Hinalik in Azerbaijan. And it was very beautiful there and people were very hospitable. But still quite traditional in their values. And after photographing for a while there, I realized that nobody in the village noticed my pregnancy. No one put their hand on my belly and asked me how far along I was. No one asked is it a girl or a boy or offered me a chair to sit down and rest. And I was surprised at first, but then it dawned on me. I carry the camera, a professional tool. So in the minds of these people I was a photographer and not a woman. It was as though I could not be both. In my work around the world I travel to a lot of remote places and I often see societies that are quite traditional and patriarchal. And the one curious thing that I discovered is that the attitudes and customs which prevail towards women in these places don't necessarily apply to me. And it's not only because I'm a foreigner. It's also because they perceive me as someone with a power. The power to tell the story, their story. And this power changes the dynamics of gender and it creates a neutral space where I can photograph men of authority, be it militia men, prominent leaders or village patriarchs. And these men, these powerful men, they pose for my pictures, they bend their rules and they do respectfully do what I ask. Like in this case. Photography has empowered me and it has also enabled me to meet extraordinary people. And especially women. Now as you've seen Kyara's work now and like many of you I've grown up with this image of a female icon. A very beautiful woman but in a very specific way, a woman, a fragile woman that needs to be saved. In popular culture rarely did I see women who actually managed to save themselves. But the reality has always been different. And in my work I came across women that overcame unspeakable traumas but their spirit remained strong. So today when I'm being asked who is your role model, I think of these women. They're not known to the world. They're what we call ordinary women. But their resilience and spirit is something absolutely remarkable. We've all been following the Me Too movement and this worldwide campaign that galvanized so many brave people, both women and men, to step forward with their testimonies of sexual harassment and abuse. But in the mainstream media we're mostly focused on stories of public figures and celebrities and we don't hear enough voices of regular people. So today I'd like to share with you some stories of very brave women that came forward in spite of this culture of stigma and shame around the subject. Now over the years I've spent some time in a place very far from home in North Dakota, Spirit Lake. It's a Native American reservation. And in this tightly-need community of about 2,000 people I came across a shocking statistic. For every 62 residents in Spirit Lake there's at least one registered sex offender. Just in comparison, the sex offender ratio in Manhattan is 81,000 to one. There is 62 to one. Okay? Let that set in. And most of these crimes happen in the victim's own homes. Now you would think it's the safest place imaginable, right? Your own family. But once these incidents take place the trust is broken and victims often find themselves with having no alternative, no place to go. And many of these crimes are not investigated because the family members urge the victims not to report the criminals because of stigma and shame once again. In Spirit Lake I met Jada. She was repeatedly assaulted by several of her family members. She told me she was a child victim of sex abuse since she was nine years old. Okay? And she said, sometimes you have no choice but to go back to your family. You still get hurt by them, but you end up going back. Sashin was raped by a family member when she was 11 years old. And her grandmother said, shh, don't tell anyone. As a result, the man was not punished. He's still walking free. He's her neighbor now. And she says when she does her dishes, she can see him through the kitchen window. So she ducks her head low to block him out of view. But Sashin today is a woman, no longer a child. She's a mother now, herself. And she doesn't want to keep her head low anymore. She wants to break the wall of silence over this taboo subject. She insisted on instituting the sexual harassment policy at the public library where she worked to prevent these crimes from happening again and protect her own children. Now gender-based violence is widespread in our world. And Spirit Lake was one example of a peaceful community where it has reached epidemic proportions. But in the zones of conflict, it's especially common. Here are some stories from Congo DRC. Women here have been systematically targeted and rape has become the weapon of war. But again, individuals of incredible spirit and strength rise above this landscape of despair. In Congo, I met a local nun, Sister Angelique, a beautiful woman. She sheltered orphans born out of rape by women that were once abducted by the Lord Resistance Army rebels. She also worked with victims of sexual violence and war trauma. She obtained plots of land for them and she taught them how to cultivate the land. She gave them cooking classes for women like Ruth whose family members were killed by the LRA. In Congo, I met a woman who survived a devastating act of violence. The LRA killed her husband in front of her. And then they said, would you rather die or be tortured? She said she would prefer to die but they tortured her instead. Now this is going to sound really horrible but they cut her lips off with a machete knife. It fell on my lap like a donut, she recalled. And then they sent her back to her village mutilated to instill fear in all the others. When I was photographing Joan, I felt nervous just like all of you right now. I felt intrusive with my camera, what am I doing? And she stood there calmly and she looked at me with a twinkle in her eye and she said, when you're done with these pictures, can you please give one to me? I've never been photographed before. Then I thought, wow, what a strong woman. I look at her face and all I can see is her trauma but she sees her face in the mirror every day. And to her it's just a face, her face, okay? In my work in general I'm constantly amazed at the ability of people to overcome and recover from some of the most gruesome circumstances. When I went to Chernobyl Ukraine in the winter of 2010, I observed life resurging in a place once devastated by the world's most powerful nuclear disaster. What I saw there was that wild nature has reclaimed spaces once inhabited by humans. Just like this birch tree is pushing through the floorboard of a school gymnasium in prepeds, a city once inhabited by 40,000 people now completely deserted. They call it the exclusion zone. It's a vast area around the damaged nuclear reactor where access is prohibited due to high levels of radioactive contamination. Other than some thrill seekers who penetrate the zone illegally and hide in its forests and buildings and a few tourists who come in with special guides carrying radiation measuring devices, no one else is allowed into the zone. Except some women who were past their birth-giving age. They were allowed to go back and resettle in the zone of this disaster. And today there are elderly women. They live alone because they've outlived their husbands. All the men have died. They live alone and their children moved away. When I met Hannah, she was 78 years old. And this incredible woman, she was native to Chernobyl. So she survived the great famine of Ukraine which was imposed by Soviet-era blockade. When her neighbors resorted to cannibalism and almost butchered her for food, she survived that. On top of that, she survived the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, this woman, the Abushka as we call it in Russian. And then two months after the disaster, she chose to go back and resettle in this area. I watched Hannah run around her yard and do things with almost manic energy in a ghost village that had only three remaining inhabitants. So I asked her, Hannah, are you not afraid of radiation? She said, radiation? No, starvation. I'm afraid of that. Nadezhda, another woman I met there, she lived near the barbed wire of the exclusion zone. And she snuck into the forbidden forest almost every day to fetch berries for her winter preserves. And she told me, when I see the police, I hide in the bushes, no one can stop me. The food these women harvested and ate in the zone was most likely contaminated, right? But they didn't seem to care or be affected by it. Many of the women I met there were liquidators. They were put in charge of cleaning out the radioactive contamination. So some of them developed thyroid cancers. And I asked them again and again, was the pool of your homeland so strong that you decided to go back and resettle in this place in spite of these dangers? And one of them said, the bird flies close to its nest. Those who have left all died of sadness. Now I live in Istanbul. And unlike the women of Chernobyl, the three friends I met here don't have the same strong sense of belonging to their homeland. All three of them came from the countryside in eastern Anatolia because they felt they were outcasts back home. They settled in Istanbul. Biologically they were born as men, but by gender they chose to be women. And it was through them that I learned about the liquidity of gender identity and the dangers these women face every day just to preserve their right to define themselves. Secil wanted to keep connections with her family back home. But each time she traveled back to her hometown, she had to disguise herself as a man. She put a strap around her chest to flatten her breasts. She put on men's clothes and dyed her hair black. She said the only good thing about a Turkish trans is that many Turkish names are gender neutral so she didn't have to change her name. Secil could be a boy or a girl. Yankee cut all ties with her family because they expected a traditional life out of her, having wife and children. She said marriage to her represented an encroachment on her personal freedom. Helene, however, had completely different views. She dreamt of starting a family. She said I want my husband to be a passionate and jealous man. I want him to call me every hour and ask me where I am. But in spite of their dreams and aspirations, many of these transgender migrants I met in Istanbul ended up in a sex industry working clubs and brothels of the city because it's the only community that's accepting them and the only job that's readily available for them. Transgender activist Sheval told me that there are still no anti-discrimination laws in place to allow for equal and fair employment opportunities for members of the LGBTQI in Turkey. She herself started as a sex worker but then got off the streets. But many of her friends are still working on the streets. For them just walking in Istanbul is an act of courage in itself as they face regular violence from both clients and police. Yankee once told me that there are some places where a lot of LGBTQ members gather where she is accepted people like her are accepted. But she said I don't go there. For her going there is basically accepting defeat. Instead she goes to traditional places where she stands out where people stare at her and call her names. Let them stare she says. I'm different but I know I'm beautiful. Thanks to women like Yankee and others I've come a long way in my perception of what a female icon should be. The social media has enabled us to start a debate on such taboo subjects as sexual harassment and assault. And more and more of these female voices are heard louder and clearer now and for me as a woman it's an exciting thing to watch. This paradigm that you're talking about shifting from the damsel in distress to a powerful individual who is not ashamed or afraid to speak out. So today I'd like to celebrate these new female icons with you and I hope more of them will be stepping into the spotlight. Thank you.