Friendship : A Celebration of Humanity

What is a friend?

In this beautiful photographic portrait, 100 talented photographers, including a number of Pulitzer Prize winners, answer this question as they vividly render this fragile, yet powerful, essential bond. Selected from more than 40,000 global entries in one of the most ambitious photographic competitions ever staged, the images reproduced in this book are part of the M.I.L.K. Collection: Moments of Intimacy, Laughter, and Kinship. These engaging photographs depict the powerful connection of friendship that lights up life in both good times and bad.

The M.I.L.K. project was conceived to "celebrate humanity," including the honoring of what it is to be a friend. As Maeve Binchy so poignantly describes in her prologue, "as a teacher, a traveler and a writer, I have wandered many places in the world, always and everywhere being touched by images of friendship. Tiny children going to school in Bali, picking huge banana leaves to shelter each other when tropical rain storms threatened their immaculate white shirts. Two old men in Athens, so lost in their daily chess game that they were unaware of the traffic swirling around and tourists pushing past them... Boys in Scotland who were playing brilliant football in an old yard with their folded jackets serving as the goal posts... Shoppers in New York clutching each other with excitement at the thought of the next bargain possibly around the next corner."

Open yourself to the wonders of this magnificent volume. In these pages you will truly find yourself among friends.

The photography event of our time, M.I.L.K. (an acronym for Moments of Intimacy, Laughter, and Kinship) is a spectacular celebration of the human spirit. For two years, leading photographers from every one of the world's 192 countries were invited to submit photographs that capture and celebrate the essence of humanity. Ultimately 17,000 photographers from a staggering total of 164 countries participated, among them a myriad of award winners. From the more than 40,000 photographs submitted, 300 appear in three books, a stunning collection that features prologues from James McBride (FAMILY, May 2001), Maeve Binchy (FRIENDSHIP, September 2001), and Kim Phuc (LOVE).