#petermenzel

[studioriver-dfts]

Material World: A Global Family Portrait by Peter Menzel (Russia, 1994)

The family posed in front of their home with all their material possessions.

[aaminahmir]

Peter Menzel

Material World

This images in this book focuses on 30 different families in different countries in the world outside of their homes surrounded by all of their possessions, some having jars and some with electronic gadgets. This series of images portrays the feel and look of the human condition around the world. It puts a physical face on issues regarding populaton, environment, social justice, and consumption, highliting important questions us as a species are faced with, which is ‘can six billino of us have all the things we want?’

[jjules85]

Quand le nettoyage du frigo prend des allures de photo de #petermenzel (à Poitiers, France)

[rangathangarajah-blog-blog-blog]

Freelancing in Somalia during their civil war and in Kuwait right after the first Bush War, I had some rather intense experiences that made life in the U.S. seem rather shallow and superfluous. Sitting in my office early one morning, listening to NPR, which is the way I like to start every day, I heard an amazing piece on the marketing of Madonna’s autobiographic book called SEX. The book was a sensation in the U.S. The radio report ended with Madonna singing, ‘I am living in a material world and I am just a material girl,’ or something close. I thought it was spot on. We live in an idiotic capitalist self-indulgent society where the sex life of a pop star is more important than impending starvation, land mines and child soldiers in Africa, or more interesting than the world’s biggest man-made natural disaster in oil fields of the Middle East.

Peter Menzel, photojournalist & author of the new book I want to read, Material World: A Global Family Portrait.