David Y. Lee’s “The Waiting List”

“If you give me a camera, I’ve got a purpose. This is why I want to be a photographer.”

Back in 2008, David Y. Lee was a member of the White House press corps, skilled at jockeying for the best position and finding fresh takes on often-photographed events, but ultimately observing from a distance. Then, an article in The Washington Post about organ donation caught his eye, with a statistic he found hard to ignore: one third of the people on the transplant wait list were ineligible because they were too sick, not sick enough, or due to some other complication.

And, as he found out by doing more research, even though 90% of Americans said they believed in organ donation, only

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