liquidnight:

Mary Ellen Mark - Christopher with his Kitten, Sandgap, Kentucky, USA - 1990

“Mary first encountered this boy and his parents in Kentucky while working on a story about rural poverty. She learned their address and later went to visit their home. ‘The parents were too shy to come out to be photographed,’ she remembers, ‘but the kids came out.’ The boy’s disheveled hair, dirty face and wary stare all suggest the poverty of his life, but the fierceness with which he clutches his kitten speaks of a determination that transcends his surroundings.”

From Mary Ellen Mark by Charles Hagen