Method vs. Madness

“If we tell people about our house, will anyone believe us?”

This poignant question, posed by Mumbai resident Nagamma Shilpri, represents a cry for help from one of the most voiceless, yet rapidly expanding populations in the world: those living in the deteriorating conditions of the world’s slums.

According to UN reports, more than 1 Billion people– a third of of the world’s urban dwellers–reside in slums. This number is expected to double in the next 25 years, making the slum the fastest growing habitat on the planet.

To draw attention to the plight of Ms. Shilpri and the billions like her, award winning Norwegian photojournalist Jonas Bendiksen spent the course of three years between 2005 and 2007 documenting the living conditions in the slums of four of the world’s fastest growing cities: Jakarta, Indonesia; Mumbai, India; Nairobi, Kenya; and Caracas, Venezuela. The result is an exhibition titled, The Places We Live, which opened last spring at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway and is now available to international viewers thanks to a stunningly designed website and a coffee table book published by Aperture.

Produced in conjunction with Magnum Photos, The Places We Live juxtaposes Bendiksen’s arresting images of cramped, crowded living quarters with audio recordings of residents from the slums of each city. This compelling documentary offers an up-close look at a bitter reality for urban centers across the globe: as cities expand in terms of size and prosperity, so too does its underclass. These individuals, many of whom migrate to the city from rural areas to find work, find themselves on the margins of societies that cannot and will not support them, leaving them to struggle through an existence in unsafe, makeshift structures with little or no access to basic public services like clean water and sanitation.

Perhaps most striking about this project is the resilience, resourcefulness and sheer will to live held by the families and residents captured in Bendiksen’s images. From the father who built a home out of discarded stickers and posters from local printing shop in Jakarta, to the family whose walls are adorned with newspapers from around world as a deterrent against cockroaches, each of these improvised dwellings still bear distinguishing qualities that manage to express each family’s individuality, no matter how tiny or crumbling their living conditions.

Despite the diversity of ethnicity, gender, age, educational and family backgrounds of the people interviewed for this project, each subject shares a remarkably similar set of fears, goals and tales of survival: the search for work, the threat of disease and natural disaster, the need to create shelter out of any materials they can find; stories of husbands who abandoned them and families they are too ashamed to reach out to. All told, it is the interconnectedness of these stories that make them so tragic; presenting us with the callous truth that for all the world’s growth and prosperity, such a vast population remains so brazenly left behind.

Below are just a few links to some of the many organizations working to improve conditions and advocate for the people living in the urban slums:

Shining Hope of Community (SHOFCO): a community-based youth initiative that operates in the Kibera slums in Nairobi to empower and educate its residents

Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action for Women and Children (SNEHA): works to empower women and children in poor urban communities in greater Mumbai

Urban Poor Consortium: Advocates for displaced communities in Jakarta

The Cities Alliance: a global coalition of cities and their development partners committed to scaling up successful approaches to poverty reduction and promoting positive urbanization

UN Habitat: promotes socially and environmentally sustainable human settlement development and the achievement of adequate shelter for all

The Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC): an Indian NGO that organizes hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers and pavement dwellers to address issues related to urban poverty, and collectively produce solutions for affordable housing and sanitation.

Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI): builds partnerships with national governments that produce, control or regulate all of the commodities that the poor need for development (land, water, sanitation, electricity, housing finance)

Images: Jonas Bendiksen/ Magnum Photos

via: PSFK