Description
"Material World: A Global Family Portrait" by photographer Peter Menzel (published 1994 by Sierra Club Books), co-authored with Charles C. Mann and Paul Kennedy. Sixteen photographers spent one week each living with a "statistically average" family in 30 countries, learning about their work, food, dreams, and attitudes toward their possessions. Each family was then photographed outside their home with everything they owned, creating a visual inventory of material life from Iceland to Mali to Japan. The resulting portraits reveal staggering differences in wealth: an American family's possessions spill across the yard, while a family in Bhutan has a few hand tools and cooking pots. The book is an international bestseller that puts a human face on the issues of population, environment, social justice, and consumption.
