Where Children Sleep

Photographer James Mollison put together a project with an idea for engaging with children's rights. He considered how important a child's bedroom is to his childhood and identity. So Mollison traveled the world photographing children and their bedrooms.
Interestingly, 3 of the children (and their bedrooms) are from Israel - 1 from Beitar Ilit, another from the West Bank and a third from Hebron.
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Bilal, 6, Wadi Abu Hindi, The West Bank


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Tzvika, 9, Beitar Illit, The West Bank


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Douha, 10, Hebron, The West Bank


Now, besides for it being interesting that he chose 3 children for his collection from this area, what really struck me is comparing these pictures, and especially that of the Jewish child, to the pictures of the other children and bedrooms in the collection.
If you look through the collection, you will see the abject poverty in which the selected children live. The lack of cleanliness and sanitation.
Comparing the pictures, I looked at the picture of the boy from Beitar - definitely a low-income neighborhood and one that is low on the socio-economic scale (though not everyone in Beitar is poor, and maybe this childs family is not) and saw a clean, orderly room, with neat beds, clean closets, painted walls, a clean floor... look at the other kids bedrooms and you will see kids bedrooms being a beat-up couch, a  thatch hut, dirt floors, filth, decrepit conditions, nowhere to put belongings...
What struck me in noticing these differences is that even with all our complaints of poverty, and I am not putting down the seriousness of poverty in Israel, to me it looks like we are still doing pretty good, in comparison to the rest of the world. Even our poor are living under much better conditions than so many others in other places.
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and besides for that, the strangest image in the collection is that of the kid from Kentucky..
Joey, 11, Kentucky, USA


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check out the full collection of images