...I have been reading and looking and reading and looking and reading.... It took me a lot of inner strength to tear myself away from the books' online pages and write this post.
In short: for this book photographer James Mollison went all over the world to take pictures of children and the places they sleep.
Places. Not necessarily rooms.
All photographs are accompanied by a short -sometimes heartbreaking- story about the lifes of the portrayed children.
Here's a small preview:
Photographs all courtesy of James Mollison
From the artists' website:
"Where Children Sleep- stories of diverse children around the world, told through portraits and pictures of their bedrooms. When Fabrica asked me to come up with an idea for engaging with children's rights, I found myself thinking about my bedroom: how significant it was during my childhood, and how it reflected what I had and who I was. It occurred to me that a way to address some of the complex situations and social issues affecting children would be to look at the bedrooms of children in all kinds of different circumstances. From the start, I didn't want it just to be about 'needy children' in the developing world, but rather something more inclusive, about children from all types of situations. It seemed to make sense to photograph the children themselves, too, but separately from their bedrooms, using a neutral background. My thinking was that the bedroom pictures would be inscribed with the children's material and cultural circumstances ' the details that inevitably mark people apart from each other ' while the children themselves would appear in the set of portraits as individuals, as equals ' just as children. This selection of diptych's from 56 in the book (Chris Boot November 2010). The book is written and presented for an audience of 9-13 year olds ' intended to interest and engage children in the details of the lives of other children around the world, and the social issues affecting them, while also being a serious photographic essay for an adult audience."
A word of advice: make sure you'll have an hour or so to spare before following the link below, once you turned the first few pages, it will be difficult to tear yourself away.
Click here for the online version of 'Where children sleep'.
