Photojournalist Paula Lerner (pictured below) of Belmont, Massachusetts, died of breast cancer Tuesday at age 52. Between 2005 and ‘09, she made several trips to Afghanistan to photograph women there. 
[Pictured above: Lerner's photo of an Afghan woman cradling a baby at prayer gathering to commemorate International Women's Day in Kandahar City, Afghanistan.] Her photos appeared in The Washington Post, The Toronto Globe and Mail, Smithsonian, People, Time, Newsweek and Business Week. One of her major projects of the 1990s was documenting the life of a widowed South Boston mother of three on welfare.
Lerner was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, but regained health after treatment and surgery, only to have the cancer return five years later. It became the subject of the 2005 book she co-authored “Why We Walk: The Inspirational Journey Toward a Cure for Breast Cancer.”