Photos

For years, even as it grew in size, the University of Pennsylvania's photography collection was largely unseen and inaccessible. More than 800 prints languished in portfolio cases on the uppermost shelves in storage until Lynn Marsden-Atlass, a year into her tenure as director and curator of Penn's Arthur Ross Gallery, decided to see what those cases contained. In the fall of 2011, she invited Gabriel Martinez, an artist and senior lecturer in photography in Penn's Department of Fine Arts, to organize an exhibition of some of the collection's notable photographs.

Gloria Orlow, 79, of Penn Valley, died Wednesday, Nov. 21, of ovarian cancer at home. Mrs. Orlow was known for establishing Famous Fotos, one of the first businesses to specialize in party favors based on life-size cutouts of celebrities. A native of Wynnefield and graduate of Overbrook High School, she spent most of her life in Penn Valley. Mrs. Orlow was always looking for novel business ideas, said her son Marc. In the 1980s, she found one. Seeing a vendor with a cardboard cutout of Ronald Reagan in front of the White House, she noticed the vendor was charging visitors $5 to have their photos taken with the cutout.

November 11 will forever remind Dorothy Blair of the Armistice Day celebration her beloved uncle captured on paper in 1918. Thomas Staller Edwards was 19 and at work in Center City when news arrived that World War I had ended. "When the mad crowd went rushing and roaring past . . . I completely lost my head. I grabbed all the papers from my desk and dumped them out the window," he wrote. "I wanted to kiss someone. I ran out on Chestnut St. and kissed all the pretty girls.

War veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan were given a camera and an assignment - use photos to tell your story, to convey what it was like to be deployed, come home, get medical care, get along in the world. Eighty photos and accompanying quotes were assembled for an exhibit, "From War to Home," that opens Tuesday at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center, timed for near Veterans Day. The images, submitted by 40 veterans from the Philadelphia area, convey the horrors of war and difficulties of coming home.

JOHANNESBURG - South African police may have altered evidence and planted weapons after they shot dead 34 striking miners near Lonmin's Marikana mines in August, according to photographic evidence presented at a commission of inquiry into the killings. Photographs taken by police the night after the shootings show more weapons by the dead bodies than there were in photographs taken immediately after the violence on Aug. 16. Thousands of miners had gathered at hills in Marikana about 58 miles northwest of Johannesburg where 34 miners were shot dead by police and 78 wounded in the worst state violence since the end of apartheid in 1994.

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Two female Army officers testified Wednesday that they had provided nude photos to a general facing sex-crime charges. A married captain testified that Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair repeatedly had asked her to send him nude photos of herself, which she said made her uncomfortable. Eventually, she said she placated the married general by sending him downloaded pornographic photos of other women cropped so their faces were not visible. The testimony came on the third day of a hearing at Fort Bragg to determine whether Sinclair will be tried on multiple criminal charges including forcible sodomy, wrongful sexual conduct, and adultery, which is a crime under the military justice system.

THANKS TO a decision in Commonwealth Court that temporarily blocked implementation of the Pennsylvania voter-ID law, most voters tomorrow do NOT need to have photo identification to cast their ballots. No thanks to the same decision, confusion and delay could make voting take longer than usual. That would suit the Republicans who passed the law just fine - their obvious intention was to make it harder for people who traditionally vote Democratic to exercise their rights. But you can fight back - not only by getting out to vote tomorrow, but also doing all you can to make voting go faster for yourself and for the people in line with you. The most important fact to know: You do not - repeat, DO NOT - need to have photo identification to vote tomorrow if, like most voters, you have voted in your polling place before.

WE WOULD never say that it doesn't matter whom or what you vote for - in fact, our picks for president and city referendum questions are below - but this year, it could also matter how quickly you vote. Because a controversial Pennsylvania voter-ID law was blocked in court, most voters on Tuesday do NOT need to have photo identification to cast their ballots, although everyone will be asked for one. But there is much confusion over this, and that could lead to delays in the voting line, so be prepared.

Sam Muscatello arrived four months early, weighing a pound and a half, tiny enough to fit in the hand of his mother, Ann Marie. If only she could hold him. It would be two weeks before the doctors at Abington Memorial Hospital would let her take him out of his Isolette. Ann Marie was a mess. The last thing she wanted that second morning of his fragile life was a baby picture. "I don't like pictures on a good day," Ann Marie said. "And this was not a good day. " She was being wheeled by a college friend to the Special Care Nursery when she ran into Robin Trautmann, a portrait photographer who volunteers at Abington.