Although I wasn't even ten years old at the time, I remember being really captivated by Peter Menzel's
Material World: A Global Family Portrait. The concept is simple— cultural portraits in the form of photographs of "average" families presened alongside their possessions. A sort of stripped down, dissected interior editorial, minus the style element, in a way. Anyway, I hadn't seen the book in YEARS, so when I had a chance encounter with it at the library this week, I knew I had to take a look.
The photographs might be a little dated, but the idea that from possessions, you can extract dreams, lifestyles, and cultures, is timeless. What do your possessions say about you?
Russia, The Kapralovs, 1993:
China, The Wus, 1993:
Kuwait, The Abdullas, 1993:
Scans from
Material World, by Peter Menzel, 1994.
