Fabrica, December 2010. Where Children Sleep is the latest editorial project developed at Fabrica, Benetton research center on communication. It features James Mollison’s photographs of children’s bedrooms around the world – including from the USA, Mexico, Brazil, the UK, Italy, Kenya, Senegal, Japan, China and Nepal – each shown with a portrait of the child whose bedroom is featured and with a short story text about their life.

The book’s aim is to interest and engage its readers in the lives of children around the world – in the diversity of circumstances in which children sleep and grow and in some of the social issues that affect them. We learn about children like Kaya in Tokyo, whose bedroom is full of the dresses her proud mother makes for her; about Bilal, the Bedouin goatherd living in the West Bank, who sleeps outdoors with his family; about the Nepali girl Indira, who has worked in a granite quarry since she was three years old; and about Ahkôhxet, the Kraho boy who sleeps on the floor of a hut deep in the Amazon jungle.

 

Photographed over four years with the support of Save the Children, the book is to be enjoyed by readers of all ages, its texts have been prepared with an audience of nine to thirteen-year-olds in mind. ‘I hope this book will help children think about inequality, within and between societies around the world,’ says Mollison in his introduction, ‘and perhaps start to figure out how, in their own lives, they may respond.’

 

The book is published by Chris Boot (Contrasto in Italy).