December 17th, 2008

By John DeFore

Published to coincide with the historic moment at which, for the first time, more humans live in cities than in the country — and, as the author notes, “one-third of these urban dwellers — more than one billion people — live in slums,” the exceptional photography book The Places We Live puts a human face on appalling environmental issues without resorting to sentimental clichés.

Photographer Jonas Bendiksen does this by not looking for the button-pushing universal image (the malnourished girl with watery eyes, say) but by meeting individual people, listening to their stories, and visiting their homes: The bulk of the book consists of four-panel spreads in which Bendiksen places his camera in the center of a single-room dwelling and photographs its four walls and the inhabitants who share them; accompanying the layouts are first-person narratives that can dispel myths about poverty (as with Shuresh Chandra, who shares an apparently bed-free room with three other grown men despite having a bachelor’s degree) and caution readers against pitying the subjects (”I don’t know how you see my house,” one man says, “but to me it’s beautiful”).

Focusing on four centers of slum population — Nairobi, Mumbai, Jakarta and Caracas – the book may seem to focus on environments but quietly emphasizes the individuals who sometimes built them out of trash. A Jakarta family of five, for instance, lives underneath a bridge, squeezed into a box structure whose roof is waist-high and whose walls are patched with stickers advertising Dunlop tires. The family endures terrifying conditions (rising floodwater and the possibility of a bridge collapse are daily worries), but when Bendiksen’s camera looks into their eyes it sees people who don’t look anywhere near giving up.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media