The best way is to restructure it like this :  
<dl>
<dt title='John Doe' id='123'>//id's can never be a number
    <span class='left'>John Doe</span>
    <span class='right'>USA</span>
</dt>
<dd>
  <figure>
    <img class='photo' src='' alt='John Doe'>// no closing slash needed
    <figcaption>The caption</figcaption>
  <figure>
</dd>
</dl>
As the semantics matter! I think this would be the best way to do it to take advantage of the seo and 100% semantics.