Julian Alps, Slovenia by Cindy Schafer

At first glance, this photograph from HHS contender Cindy Schafer stirred a flood of images, including 2008's First Edition Hot Shot Derek Henderson's Reids Farm. And it makes sense that there are so many associations because, as Schafer writes, everyone does laundry. Like contender Magda Biernat, she's traveled far and wide and taken photographs to prove it. You might say laundry's a bit of an obsession, and Schafer admits:

I don't think there is any aspect of laundry that I don't like. I also like to think of myself as a feminist: a woman who values political, social and economic equality between the sexes, a woman who has many more educational and career choices than the generations of women who came before her. Yet, laundry, along with other types of housework, has historically been considered "women's work". It embodies the soul of domesticity; the antithesis of everything a 1970's feminist stood for.... Laundry is washed in every corner of the globe, at every level of the socioeconomic spectrum whether one does it themselves or pays someone else to do it. Culturally, laundry unites us. Socially it still divides us.

See more of Schafer's work on herwebsite.