Wow. Very nice

I find it kind of odd how the children themselves are photographed. They seem extremely staged to play up the class differences/play on our expectations. I'm not sure how the children were directed -- were they asked to dress like they did every day, or in their best? were they asked to bring something representing their daily routine/chores/work?

I tend to love photography projects like this; they can be illuminating and can be great tools for getting across the gross class disparities in play. But I'm somehow put off by the photos of the children, which seem a lot more staged/prepared than the sleeping place photos do. Maybe it's just more obvious on the children.

It's particularly hard- especially when you contrast Appalachia to Cambodia- to pick apart what is objectively "quality of life" and what is subjectively associated with higher class in western culture.
Ryuta, for example, has many possessions in a small room with a unit in the upper right-hand corner of the photo which belies a lack of central A/C.
Ahkohxet lives in a thatched home which is kept tidy and has room to hang clothes. Unlike Roathy, there are no dangerous makeshift fireplaces made with old tires, and there's enough time and resources available to keep a clean and relatively healthy home with a wall that didn't need to be thatched in garbage. However, I think if Ahkohxet lived in one of the country's favelas, it might not be quite like that...
It's interesting to contrast Jasmine and Alyssa as two Mideastern Americans with wide disparity in living conditions. Also, it looks like Jasmine might be a child pageant model, considering the trophies and sashes strewn across her room.
I'm trying to frame a comment about Justin, I think my ideas on it have a lot to do with what it must feel like as an aspiring football player to have a gesticulating white guy standing over your bed every night.

This is mind blowing really, the differences between these kids. One question that comes to mind though, and that has been brewing since the coverage of the Somalia/Kenya catastrophe, is the social responsibility of the photographer. Most of these kids aren't really in acute need, but Roathy... could you really photograph a child living in conditions like that and then just walk away? Of all the kids here, he looks like he might be in serious danger of not living to see his teens.

This actually appears very biased. Except for Japan and the US most of the other countries are represented as low-income with stereotypical poverty ridden images. I am sure that Nepal has children bedrooms that resemble in opulence Jaime's (the 9 yo from NYC). The album seems to move towards a condescending, patriarchal look at the wrongs that happen "elsewhere".

Some of the attitudes about this are...really, well, annoying and ethnocentric. I bet a lot of the higher-income, "educated" people are looking at this and going "aww, I wish I could save those kids from their horrible lives". Are you really seeing those kids as individuals?

The room in Tokyo looks like my sons' room when they still shared an 8x11 foot space.  By the time I was in high school, the room I had as a girl was approaching the appearance of the room of the girl in Appalachia - except my mom was a real wizzard at using spray-painted newspaper to cover dry rot.

Some of the disparity seems to focus on material goods and tchotchkes, as opposed to access to food, water, and safe living conditions. I won't say that there aren't meaningful gaps that belie social inequalities that pictures like this could capture, but it falls so easily into this very first-world condescending "Oh, the poor dears and their lives of deprivation!" I know as a child I didn't see a difference between the toys that were expensive and the "toys" that were just bits of natural material I found around my home, and I'm not sure all of these kids would think of their bedrooms as shameful. It makes me uncomfortable to portray some of these bedrooms as "tragic" if the children themselves experience them that way. Or that the children with the rich and full bedrooms aren't suffering in some other way (bad families, other kinds of marginalization and deprivation, etc.). Disparities in wealth is a genuine issue, for sure, but I don't agree with how these pictures illustrate it - I'd be much more moved by pictures of where they get their drinking water from. Or if the pictures were accompanied by narratives from the children themselves, so that they could have a voice in the project, rather than be objectified by it.

Yeah, there is definitely a bias in photographing the rooms.  I don't know about Brazil or Nepal or Cambodia, but the photographs from New York and Appalachia make me raise my eyes and say "really?"  That is not a typical children's bedroom in New York City.  I know people in New York City, and not impoverished people either, who's entire apartments are barely larger than that.  And compared to the other rooms, the girl from Appalachia's room seems to be shot deceptively.  Every other room is shot, if not in whole, at least mostly, but we can't even see her bed.  In the US, there's the idea that NYC is a center of opulence, and Appalachia is 3rd world level squalor at all times.  So instead of showing the rooms as-is, they find a millionaire's son, and shoot only 2/3rd of Alyssa's room to make it appear smaller, even though there are plenty of other things to focus on if they want to make the point that "Appalachia is lagging far behind the country economically."  There's also a strong bias here; there are several photographs taken in America and Japan.  Aside from Alyssa, ALL of them are shown as living quite comfortable, even opulent, lifestyles.  EVERY OTHER COUNTRY is shown exclusively as poverty.  If the whole "wealthy country vs poor country" was the point, I don't understand why not take a few pictures of, say, the UK or Germany or France or Scandinavia.  Europe, aside from the boy from Romania (who is living in Italy, interestingly) is not even acknowledged, though there are 3 pictures of Japan, and 6 of the US, most of which seemed to go out of their way to find people of above-average income.

Can someone please explain this photo: http://www.jamesmollison.com/wherechildrensleep.php?project_id=6&p=19 

Joey, 11, Kentucky, USA - the boy with all the military equipment. Can he be in military school? (but he's only eleven) or is one of his parents in the army? How can he have the gun while being so young? (Isn't there an age limit to have a gun?) I'm confused and curious. What do you think?

Thanks/Linda

I know this makes me a terrible person, but just looking at Jamie makes me want to punch the smug little bastard right in the nose. 

i think that Alyssa's room is typical for the sort of room you would see in section 8. i grew up in section 8 housing and most of my friends lived in the same complex. even at a young age i was always amazed at the living conditions of my friends homes compared to mine. all my friends places were dirty and had the feeling that their parents had no concerns about what people though about them and most of them were two parent households. where my place was always clean and well taken care of even though my mom worked two jobs and was on her own with me. hell, i remember having to explain the concept of having to do chores to one of my friend and why i couldn't come out and play until i had finished them. blah, it makes me sick sometimes to go back because some of my old friends are still living there with family's of their own and more or less in the same living conditions they they grew up in. never mind the bridges people have burned with me because i have become so "smug and arrogant" because i went off to college instead of getting knocked up

also, i think there is some bias in the photos but i think that is due to the fact that people have to agree to have their homes photographed. i am sure most people wouldn't agree to this if they were living in crap hole

I think the photos say more about the photographer, and the individuals, than the wider categories of culture or economic class or what have you. Well, the intersection of gender with those other categories might be some interesting to look at in these photos. But mainly they're just photos? I can't resist noting that Jasmine looks... really way out there. I mean, her look is just over the top bizarre.

As many people are embracing the benefits of minimalism, it's interesting to see that "how much kids have" is a rather subjective matter.  Is that child who is showered in tiaras any better off than the boy with a simple mat?  I think not.

Also, these photographs were obviously staged (unless the little girl walks on tiaras), which means that the naked doll on the floor in another picture was an attempt to make the child look unprivileged.  Most of the differences are cultural and, by having only the affluent child (with lots of STUFF) smiling, it seems that the photographer is being rather biased.

What I see is that there can be a lot of beauty made from what is truly necessary for living, and a lot of ugliness can be made from what is not. 

IM DYING FOR A G+ 1+ BUTTON. Seriously, pelease implement it.

I remember when I saw this exhibit for the first time, a few months back.
I wondered then, and I still wonder, which of these children will be the most damaged. The great philosopher Pat Benatar said, "Hell is for children." Nothing bears this out as thoroughly as this exhibit.

My reaction to these photos was completely at odds with that of just about everyone else here.

I did feel pity for the impoverished children pictured. I say that as someone who currently lives in the U.S. but who formerly lived in the Third World and whose family mostly still lives in the Third World, in conditions approximate to some of those depicted here. I find it bizarre that some here think that pity is condescending. I feel the opposite way. I think it is condescending to say that material conditions don't matter and to assume that these children are happy as they are. That argument veers very close to so-called "orientalism." Historically, one of the primary ways in which colonialism and oppression has been justified is by arguing that impoverished communities are happier the way they are (i.e. economically exploited or disenfranchised, possessing low-technology) and Western society is doing them a favor by not "burdening" them with the goods found in wealthier nations. There is also the myth of the "noble savage." Many in the West who find their life spiritually or emotionally un-fulfilling (or just want to justify the status quo) romanticize what it is like to live in a society with less material possessions, while conveniantly ignoring the hardships and misery that often come along with that. Thus many of the depictions of Native Americans in popular culture. Thus, for example, depictions of Nepal. In the West you will often see Nepal depicted as an agrarian land full of Hindu temples where the populace is content with their low-tech lifestyle. In reality, it is a rapidly urbanizing land that is facing a great deal of social and political upheaval due to the miserable conditions that much of the population lives in but would rather not.

All I see in the comments here are people falling over themselves to try to find any way to downplay the inequality between the First World and the Third. Yes, these are "idealized" depictions - that is part of the point, I'd imagine, to highlight the economic inequality of the world (not to serve as some kind of immaculate portrait of reality, which is probably impossible to realize anyway). There are very real and very stark differences between wealthy, Western nations and impoverished Third World nations. I believe this gulf to be larger than the intra-national gulf between wealthy and poor in individual Western nations. Yet many here would like to pretend these differences either do not exist or are marginal and do not "really" impact quality of life, which I think is evidently false to anyone who does even the bare minimum of research. It's a pattern I've seen on this blog in the past whenever international inequality is highlighted in a post. If there is a post about an ad that is gendered or highlighting something mean-spirited someone said - people will respond with furor. If there is a post about the extreme poverty found in the Third World, which is literally a life-and-death issue for millions - people will downplay it or try to argue that it isn't really a problem at all.

I think this attitude is present here because Third World poverty only reminds us how petty many "First World problems" are. And because there are many here whose identities are so intrinsically tied to these First World problems, they perceive posts such as these as a threat.

I think that part of the "staging" of the wealthier American kids' bedrooms might have something to do with the current popularity of design and decorating aesthetic in the American popular culture. I imagine that, if someone called me up and asked to take pictures of my bedroom for a book/magazine, not only would I clean it, but I would "stage" it with decorative elements that I felt reflect my personality, and that I want to use to represent my personality to the world. Middle and upper-class Americans are taught, through teen magazines and decor-centered books/magazines, that bedroom decor is personal, individual, and meaningful. The football and pink princess themes of two of the childrens' rooms reflect this decor-as-identity, and the spotlessness and obviously particular placement of knickknacks reflects the popular decorating aesthetic American readers would expect to see in a decorating book or magazine. I don't know how much this aesthetic exists outside of the United States, but I think that the "staging" of the wealthier American kids' rooms could have been arranged by the parents before the photographer even showed up.

I agree with the post that this type of photo essay can tell us a lot. Obviously there will be limitations as it is just one room and much of a child´s life happens outside their own room.

I think additional information would be interesting, for example, how many people does the child share their room, or even their bed with? A shot of the bathroom would also tell us a lot about access to clean water. What does their school look like? Are they in school at all?

The photos from Brazil struck me the most. And I don´t feel like Brazil´s economic diversity was captured well with the selected photo. To have one child, presumably from the Amazon region, representing all of Brazil is strange. To compare that child with one from a favela in Rio, or an apartment in São Paulo, or a home in the NE...would have captured the economic diversity of Brazil and been very striking.

Yay, more pictures showing how people in "third world countries" are so poor and how the population of the rich ones should feel guilty. The brazilian indian is funny for me, they try to show her like she needs a bed, but that isn't what she needs, or what the indian population asks for (at least here in Brazil), they ask for space, space to live their cultures without people interfering, with enough land and without being trew away from their homes.

My feelings are mixed on this one. I totally agree with what Jadey said, but I'm not sure that's the case with ALL these pictures. The rooms of Ahkohxet and Indira, for instance, seem like they are clean in the culturally relative sense. Ahkohxet's room is very tidy, and although Indira's is a little cluttered, it isn't necessarily DIRTY; the kids, living a lifestyle unlike that of a middle class child in, say, the U.S., have no use for so many tchotchkes. All they truly need are the materials necessary for survival, as has been said. I do understand the argument against the orientalism that this mentality could invoke, but in the strict sense of NECESSITY, are Ahkohxet and Indira truly worse off than, say, Ryuta or Jasmine? Maybe, maybe not. You can't tell from these pictures alone. In contrast, Roathy's room appears very dirty, and even dangerous, with garbage on the ground and old tires. Roathy himself appears to have kwashiorkor, whereas Ahkohxet and Indira appear relatively healthy in comparison. Of course, I do agree that these pictures seem to feature only what people are EXPECTING of these countries. They're also a bit othering, and without a doubt certainly biased, but through analysing the pictures out of their context, this is what I have determined. 

Oh, and slightly off-topic, but that doll in Alyssa's room is beautiful, abliet a little ratty. The open hole in her ceiling is bothering the hell out of me. That can't be good for the air :/