When a photojournalist sets out to document the human condition and aims the camera's lens at another person, he or she breaches the membrane of privacy that surrounds us all. It's a lot like joining in a dance -- but being (almost always) uninvited.

Suddenly there is tension. An intimacy develops, for the subject knows that every inch of them is being scrutinized -- and the photographer knows they know it. Regardless of age or gender, it is a sensual embrace.

The dance can go smoothly, especially if the person before the lens adores attention. More often, however, subjects feel vulnerable, and that vulnerability is often what makes them interesting -- whether it's a young victim of racist bullying; a nervous villager exposed hours earlier to a radiation leak; or an exiled dictator reduced to a lifetime of political obscurity. All the photojournalist's human subjects, whatever their circumstances, know that, ultimately, they will be judged.