The Wall Street Journal sent several photographers out overnight to shoot New York City during the hours when most of its citizens are sleeping.
Here are photos of those awake when most of the city is not.
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Delivery man Rich Lopes carries a stack of newspapers to a vendor on Wall Street at 5:57 a.m. (Keith Bedford for The Wall Street Journal)
A food vendor walks up 11th Avenue near 47th Street. (Ramsay de Give for The Wall Street Journal)
I’m longtime fans of photojournalist Peter Menzel, whose visual anthropology captures the striking span of humanity’s socioeconomic and cultural spectrum. His Hungry Planet portrayed the world’s sustenance with remarkable graphic eloquence, and today I’m turning to some of his earliest work, doing the same for the world’s shelter: Material World: A Global Family Portrait — a beautiful visual time-capsule of life in 30 countries, captured by 16 of the world’s leading photographers.
In each of the 30 countries, Menzel found a statistically average family and photographed them outside their home, with all of their belongings. The result is an incredible cross-cultural quilt of possessions, from the utilitarian to the sentimental, revealing the faceted and varied ways in which we use “stuff” to make sense of the world and our place in it.
Though the book is now 17 years old, it is still relevant and it’s still a curious meta-evidence for the material world we live in. Some of these families may have more today, but the disparity is probably the same in most cases. It still circulates. And for another excellent companion read, see Menzel’s 1998 follow-up, Women in the Material World — a fascinating look at an even more intimate aspect of the human family.
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Mali: The Natomo Family
It’s common for men in this West African country to have two wives, as 39-year-old Soumana Natomo does, which increases their progeny and in turn their chance to be supported in old age. Soumana now has eight children, and his wives, Pama Kondo (28) and Fatouma Niangani Toure (26), will likely have more. How many of these children will survive, though, is uncertain: Mali’s infant mortality rate ranks among the ten highest in the world. Possessions not included in this photo: Another mortar and pestle for pounding grain, two wooden mattress platforms, 30 mango trees, and old radio batteries that the children use as toys.
Well known for his eye-opening book Material World: A Global Family Portrait where he asked an average family in 30 locations to empty out their homes to show their possessions, Peter Menzel came up with another brilliant book idea. He teamed up with his wife, Faith D’Aluision, and together traveled the world exploring how the eating habits differ from country to country. Then the duo presented their results in a photo album, called Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.
Apart from being interesting and educative, the project brings up some social issues. The exposed weekly grocery list provides information not only about dietary habits, but also about health, economy, lifestyle, etc. It also clearly shows the division between the first world and the developing countries. Interestingly, less affluent families eat more nutritious food than those who could actually afford it. On the contrary, more economically stable families eat more processed food, while fresh products constitute just a small part of their diet.
The wife and husband’s team visited 24 different countries and 30 families to photograph them at home, at the market, and surrounded by their weekly food supplies.
Website: Peter Menzel, Book: What the World Eats
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Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23
Favorite foods: soup with fresh sheep meat
What was your favorite toy as a child? In Gabriele Galimberti’s wonderful series Toy Stories, which I recently spotted over at Feature Shoot, the Italian photographer traveled the world to photograph children with their most prized possessions, be they pink or blue, new or old, plentiful or scarce. The resulting photo series is in turns haunting and funny, but Galimberti’s reports from the field are equally interesting. “The richest children were more possessive. At the beginning, they wouldn’t want me to touch their toys, and I would need more time before they would let me play with them,” Galimberti says. “In poor countries, it was much easier. Even if they only had two or three toys, they didn’t really care. In Africa, the kids would mostly play with their friends outside.”
Toy Stories doesn’t just appeal in its cheerful demeanor, but it really becomes quite the anthropological study. And, ultimately, these photos give poignant insight into poverty on a very basic level – children’s toys.
Page through a few of our favorites from the series after the jump, and then be sure to head over to Galimberti’s website to see many more.
Tangawizi – Keekorok, Kenya
Out of sight, out of mind, the phrase continues to plague my perspective. I suppose that’s why traveling’s so important. And that’s exactly what Kenyan-born, English-raised, Venice-based documentary photographer James Mollison explores in Where Children Sleep – a remarkable collaborative project between him and American journalist Chris Booth capturing the diversity of and, often, disparity between children’s lives around the world through portraits of their bedrooms. The project began on a brief to engage with children’s rights and morphed into a thoughtful meditation on poverty and privilege, its 56 images spanning from the stone quarries of Nepal to the farming provinces of China to the silver spoons of Fifth Avenue.
Perhaps most interestingly, this project was designed as an empathy tool for nine- to 13-year-olds to better understand the lives of other children around the world, but it is also very much a poignant photographic essay on human rights for the adult reader.
One of the more meaningful photo series I’ve come across in a while, these photographs paint a reality that is difficult to depict through words, revealing shocking differences across countries, going from girls with thousand dollar dresses in their private mansions to shepherd boys sleeping with goats.
Read on to let Chris Booth and James Mollison show you where children sleep.
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Lamine, 12, lives in Senegal. He is a pupil at the village Koranic school, where no girls are allowed. He shares a room with several other boys. The beds are basic, some supported by bricks for legs. At six every morning the boys begin work on the school farm, where they learn how to dig, harvest maize and plough the fields using donkeys. In the afternoon they study the Koran. In his free time Lamine likes to play football with his friends.
Russian photographer Murad Osmann creatively documents his travels around the world with his girlfriend, Nataly Zakharova, always leading the way in his ongoing series known as Follow Me To.
With her back turned, never revealing her face to the camera, Osmann’s girlfriend guides us all on a journey across the globe to some of the most beautiful, exotic, and radiant environments. There are also comforting and familiar settings mixed in for good measure.
Whether the couple is spending a romantic night in Moscow, having an exotic adventure in Asia, wandering the streets of Tokyo, or simply going to Disneyland, Osmann keeps a visual record of their escapades as he trails behind his beloved.
He shoots the photos either on his iPhone or digital SLR camera and processes them using multiple filters in the Camera+ app before posting on Instagram.
Enjoy this exciting series and get inspired.
If grandmothers around the world had a rallying cry, it would probably sound something like “You need to eat!”
Photographer Gabriele Galimberti’s Tuscan grandmother Marisa said something similar to him before one of his many globetrotting work trips. To ensure he had at least one good meal, she prepared for him a dish of “ravioli ripieni” before he departed for his tour around the world by couchsurfing. She was not so concerned about the possible risks or mishaps her grandson might face in his adventurous travelling worldwide, but her major concern was, “what will he eat”? That is because only at home you can eat well and healthily. And above all, only your Italian grandmother (and sometimes mum) knows what is best for you.
With the taste of his grandma’s ravioli in his mouth, Gabriele travelled around the world and, next to thousands of other adventures, turned into a curious and hungry grandson for the grannies of all the countries he visited.
Appealing to their natural cooking care and their inevitable pride in their recipe, common factors to all grandmothers in the world, Gabriele persuaded them to do their best in the kitchen. This means moose stake in Alaska and caterpillars in Malawi, delicious, but ferociously hot, ten-spice-curry in India and shark soup in the Philippines.
Delicatessen with Love honors the many grandmas who have shown their grandchildren love through their culinary skills. You can’t help but smile as you flip through the series of happy women who are proudly presenting their favorite dishes, and an unexpected pure overwhelming happiness washes over you.
Buonappetito!
Maria Luz Fedric, 53, Cayman Islands. Honduran Iguana with rice and beans
Ever since the New York Times launched its interactive web project, Snow Fall (a 5 part story of skiers and snowboarders trapped by an avalanche in Washington State’s Cascade mountain range), hypotheses of its effects on journalism and publishing have been ping-ponging between online news outlets. The debates over whether or not Snow Fall’s storytelling model (that recently hit 3.5 million page views) is the future of journalism, in fact deliver something more: lessons in content integration and the opportunity for brand-publisher collaboration.
If you haven’t read the feature yet, do. It’s something like magic — a visceral adventure story about a deadly avalanche that feels more like an interactive documentary that happens to have paragraphs than a newspaper story that happens to have interactives. Particularly ingenious is a section where a map traces doomed skiers’ paths down the mountain face as you scroll down the corresponding paragraphs. Further along, an animated video follows the contours of the avalanche sweeping down the same glade, with a clicking sound whose frequency indicates the changing speed of the barreling snow pack. Not just clever. Utterly ingenious.
I’m sitting on a hard wooden chair, drinking cold coffee, and struggling to write an impassioned yet professional cover letter.
The thing is, the specter of Hunter S. Thompson keeps blowing cigarette smoke in my face.
“So that’s how you’re starting, is it?” says Hunter, looking over my shoulder at my opening paragraph.
“Well, I guess that’s what they want you to say.”
He darts away to examine something happening outside my window.
“Get f–cked, Hunter.” I grumble, and continue to tweak the same godforsaken sentence that a bunch of other chumps are simultaneously tweaking.
“It really IS with great enthusiasm that I apply for this summer reporting position…” I say, defensively.
But Hunter is gone, and all I have left is the letter than he wrote to the Vancouver Sun, back in 1958.
The month was October. A “tart-tongued” columnist named Jack Scott had just been promoted to editorial director of the Vancouver Sun. On the other side of the continent, a pre-fame and pre-Gonzo Hunter S. Thompson read a story in Time magazine about Scott’s penchant for journalistic stunts. Broke and living in a Greenwich Village basement apartment, Thompson thought to himself, “Here’s a man I might like to work for.” What follows is the greatest cover letter ever written.
There’s no indication that Scott ever wrote back to Thompson. Then again, he might not have had the time: he was demoted a few months later.
I re-read it, and laugh, wishing that I had even half his chutzpah. In case you’ve never seen this classic, here is the greatest cover letter ever written:
——————–
TO JACK SCOTT, VANCOUVER SUN
October 1, 1958 57 Perry Street New York City
Sir,
I got a hell of a kick reading the piece Time magazine did this week on The Sun. In addition to wishing you the best of luck, I’d also like to offer my services.
Since I haven’t seen a copy of the “new” Sun yet, I’ll have to make this a tentative offer. I stepped into a dung-hole the last time I took a job with a paper I didn’t know anything about (see enclosed clippings) and I’m not quite ready to go charging up another blind alley.
By the time you get this letter, I’ll have gotten hold of some of the recent issues of The Sun. Unless it looks totally worthless, I’ll let my offer stand. And don’t think that my arrogance is unintentional: it’s just that I’d rather offend you now than after I started working for you.
I didn’t make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Marquis de Sade had suddenly found himself working for Billy Graham. The man despised me, of course, and I had nothing but contempt for him and everything he stood for. If you asked him, he’d tell you that I’m “not very likable, (that I) hate people, (that I) just want to be left alone, and (that I) feel too superior to mingle with the average person.” (That’s a direct quote from a memo he sent to the publisher.)
Nothing beats having good references.
Of course if you asked some of the other people I’ve worked for, you’d get a different set of answers.
If you’re interested enough to answer this letter, I’ll be glad to furnish you with a list of references — including the lad I work for now.
The enclosed clippings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It’s a year old, however, and I’ve changed a bit since it was written. I’ve taken some writing courses from Columbia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the newspaper business, and developed a healthy contempt for journalism as a profession.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.
Most of my experience has been in sports writing, but I can write everything from warmongering propaganda to learned book reviews.
I can work 25 hours a day if necessary, live on any reasonable salary, and don’t give a black damn for job security, office politics, or adverse public relations.
I would rather be on the dole than work for a paper I was ashamed of.
It’s a long way from here to British Columbia, but I think I’d enjoy the trip.
If you think you can use me, drop me a line.
If not, good luck anyway.
Sincerely, Hunter S. Thompson
My favourite part:
“… [I've] developed a healthy contempt for journalism as a profession. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you’re trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I’d like to work for you.”
And, in the end, don’t forget what Mr. Hunter S. Thompson used to advocate:
Related posts:
Would you like to try out Mr. Thompson’s “breakfast of champions”?
6 writers who had to look up the word “sober”
“Stay motivated!” Starring: Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson’s positive perspectives
(Post inspired by Fab Carletti)
“… two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls.” (Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
…and that’s exactly what Hunter S. Thompson and his writing were: one never sober (but always damn brilliant) montagne russe. He hated to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for him. In fact, he once even said that if you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up. And he certainly did get paid for his brilliant insanity.
(Next to Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote) Hunter S. Thompson is one of my favourite journalists/writers. As you well know, he is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of writing similar to a trip through a journalistic fun house, where you didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. You knew you had better learn enough about the subject at hand to know when the riff began and reality ended. Hunter was a stickler for numbers, for details like gross weight and model numbers, for lyrics and caliber, and there was no faking it. Of course, he is known also for his love of firearms; his long-standing hatred of Richard Nixon; and his iconoclastic contempt for authoritarianism.
“So why did you remember him just now?”, you’ll ask. Truth be told, I don’t know. Maybe because I saw around his “Hell’s Angels”, an angry, fascinating and excitedly written book, that crackles like motorcycle exhaust. Or maybe I remembered him just because he died more or less about 6 years ago, in February. His legend ended with a Smith&Wesson, along with these words:
“Football season is over. No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt.”
His ex-wife used to say that he was born with an incredible talent and with a hyper-brilliant mind, but also with a “tormented soul”. What did she mean? Well, I don’t really know. All I know is that he was one incredible talented writer who – in the end - just couldn’t take the fact that “the football season” was over. And ”if you wonder if he’s gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to — and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too — and Peacocks…” (Ralph Steadman)
And now please allow me to go back to my vacation. (;
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GB is an unapologetically unreconstructed hippie and devoutly politically incorrect. She sold her soul to Guns 'N' Roses in the 90s, bought her first good electric guitar from Slash's ex-wife in Detroit, and never looked back. She /sometimes/ writes fiction (you figured it out after the "Slash's ex-wife in Detroit" part, didn't you?), nonfiction, and some things she can’t quite define. Also, she can turn bullshit into articles. She’s been published in her obscure blog, and two or three local newspapers, leaving behind digital traces like glitter. Like most snobbish wiseguys, she also pretends to know everything about everything, until questioned. :D
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