Haiti was a country hoping for a more peaceful direction during its 2006 elections after a period of widespread chaos that included President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's exile two years earlier. The violence of 2004 left somewhat of a scar for a lot of people, and they did not want that to happen again," recalls photojournalist Gary Fabiano.

"The tension was thick in the air on the main day of elections that February," says Fabiano. He traveled far from the capital to a small town where many Haitians said he would find evidence of election fraud. There, he discovered thousands of uncounted ballots in a "smelly and smoldering" city trash dump late that afternoon. U.N. election officials detained Fabiano and scurried to determine whether fraud took place. When word got out about the missing ballots, tempers flared in the streets. The announcement that the popular former President Rene Preval had won the election helped calm the crowds. "Even under confusing circumstances, Haiti was trying to move in the right direction beyond the violence," says Fabiano. "To watch that process was empowering.

Washington, D.C.-based photojournalist Gary Fabiano has covered major news events from the Bosnian war to the attack on the World Trade Center. He is a member of the White House Press Corps and regularly contributes to Newsweek, Time, U.S. News & World Report, Paris Match, Mother Jones, Le Figaro, and the Times London. In 2000, he received the 2000 Alfred Eisenstaedt Award and his photographs were then featured in the special edition of Life magazine's "Best Magazine Photos of the Year." Fabiano is a key organizer of this photo exhibit.