This [via Kottke & Lens] looks beautiful and depressing in the way that only photos seem to manage.
The caption for these photos reads:
“A 4-year-old from Romania who, with his family, sleeps on a mattress on the outskirts of Rome.”
It’s from a book called Where Children Sleep by James Mollison.
Mollison says:
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….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.
So the germ of an idea for a quick lessonette.
- Ask children to write down what their bedroom tells people about them.
- Get the book. Make separate copies of the child and the “bedroom”.
- Give each child one picture of a sleeper and another picture of a bedroom.
- Ask children to research/discuss with parents who the sleeper might be/where they might come from/what their bedroom might look like and write down the ideas
- Ask the children to research/discuss with parents the bedroom background e.g. Why are Romanians in Rome? Where is Romania? Where is Rome?
- Come back and get the children to see if they can match the face to the bedroom. Write down which ones the thought might be
- Or something …