Jonas Bendiksen: Life-size replicas of rooms in slum areas tell ... - HP

Jonas Bendiksen’s life-size replicas of rooms
• © 2009 Xavi Carreras, www.haut-touch.com
in slum areas tell of creativity in hardship
Magnum photojournalist Jonas Bendiksen’s exhibition,
The Places We Live, contains beautiful photographs
with rich, saturated colors on high quality prints. But
are the photographs not too beautiful to convey to
viewers a feeling for the tough subject matter of the
exhibition—the reality of living in four of the most
poverty-stricken and most dangerous urban areas of
the world? “What?!” reacts the photographer. “You
don’t think beauty exists in these places? What a
lack of respect for people in the slums. They spend
so much time creating beauty, just as people in the
western world spend time beautifying their houses;
why can’t we show that in the slums?”
The Places We Live printed exhibition, first mounted
at HP’s installations in Barcelona, Spain in October
2009, follows publication of the photographer’s book
of the same name and recreates the living rooms
of 20 families from the slums of Jakarta, Mumbai,
Nairobi, and Caracas. By taking a photograph of
each of the four walls of a room inside people’s
homes and using the resulting large-format prints to
build 3-D, life-size replicas of the rooms, Bendiksen
creates for viewers a virtual experience of visiting the
families.¹
More people in the world now live in cities than in
rural areas, and more than one billion—a third of all
urban dwellers—live in slums. The United Nations
forecasts this figure to double within the next twentyfive
years. Bendiksen’s book and exhibition serve to
create a platform for discourse. “There is a message,”
he says, “about the need to engage with these
communities as populated by normal human beings
who have their own ambitions and agendas and their
own variations amongst themselves.”
When he started out on the project, Bendiksen was
conscious of the fact that so many photographers
had already gone out and photographed poverty
and poor people. “So much of the material was
predictable, clichéd, and full of stereotypes,” he says.
“I wanted to get away from that and to focus not on
the extremities in the slums—the worst poverty, crime,
or pollution—but on how people create normalcy in
their daily lives in these conditions.”
¹ Magnum Photos and the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway had already produced an audiovisual version of The Places We Live. The Barcelona
exhibition was the first that featured the life-size printed walls.

At a glance
Name: Jonas Bendiksen
Profession: Photojournalist
Began career: 1996
Represented by: Magnum Photos
Founded: 1947
Business address:
Magnum Photos
151 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001-7204
USA
Telephone: (+1) 212 929 6000
Fax: (+1) 212 929 9325
Web sites:
www.jonasbendiksen.com
www.magnumphotos.com
E-mail: mail@jonasbendiksen.com
To learn more, visit www.hp.com/go/graphicarts
© 2009, 2010 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change
without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements
accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.
HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
Images © 2009 Xavi Carreras, www.haut-touch.com
4AA3-0505ENW, March 2010
CHALLENGE
•Mount an exhibition of
Bendiksen’s photographs,
conveying the need to engage
with slum communities as
populated by normal human
beings who are creative and
resourceful in hard conditions
• © 2009 Xavi Carreras, www.haut-touch.com
“It’s important that the prints are as vivid as possible, as detailed as possible. We
really want people to enter these rooms and feel like they are virtually visiting the
families.”
— Jonas Bendiksen, Photojournalist, New York, USA
SOLUTIONS
•HP Designjet L65500 and L25500
Printers were used to print the
detailed interior walls of rooms
and the urban landscape shots
on the exterior walls. Both printers
use water-based HP Latex Inks,
reducing the impact of printing on
He spent three years photographing The Places
We Live and was moved by what he saw. “I was
constantly filled with admiration for the people,” he
says. “They live under very challenging circumstances
in terms of crime and pollution, they get no services
from the municipality, and everything they have,
they build for themselves. People create jobs for
themselves, if there’s no school they make the school,
if there’s no child care they make it. They jerry-rig any
type of service they need.”
The exhibition includes testimonials by the
inhabitants, recounting daily life and presenting
experiences ranging from hardship and despair, to
successes, hard work, and ambition. “I look at the
photographs as vehicles for people’s stories to be
told,” says Bendiksen. “The personal testimonials
by the slum dwellers are the driving engine of the
project. The book and exhibition are really about the
stories they are telling.”
The Magnum group is part of HP’s Experts and
Mentors program, and on the visual side HP lent
a hand to make the viewer’s experience as real as
possible, providing Bendiksen with the necessary
durable printing materials and access to the latest
large-format printing technology at the company’s site
in Barcelona in order to achieve the required highquality
photographic detail on the walls of the rooms
as well as in the exhibition’s accompanying catalog.
“It’s important that the prints are as vivid as possible,
the environment, and produce prints
for both indoor and outdoor use
•HP Durable Frontlit Scrim Banner for
high-quality, durable prints that can
travel to multiple venues
•The exhibition catalogs were
printed on an HP Indigo press
5000, chosen for its vibrant colors,
sharp text, and on-demand printing
capabilities, eliminating waste
caused by printing too many copies
RESULTS
• A walk-in installation with such lifesize
detail and powerful testimonial
that viewers are transported into the
living rooms of the slums and get a
realistic insight into the daily life of the
people residing there
• A modular exhibition easily
transportable and adaptable to
different venues of varied sizes and
weather conditions
as detailed as possible,” says the photographer,
“because we’re essentially printing life-size walls.
We really want people to enter these rooms and feel
like they are virtually visiting the families.”
The exhibition is modular in nature, with a small
packed volume and light weight for transport
between venues. The system for joining rooms
together is designed so that they can stand in
a wide range of different layouts. Thanks to the
durability of the HP printing substrates and the
resilience of the HP Latex Inks to adverse conditions,
the exhibition may be displayed in a variety of
venues. “I’ve always thought it would be interesting
if I could bring this work to the regions where it
was shot,” says Bendiksen, “to bring it to Africa,
to Kenya, to India, and not just have it exhibited
in New York, Paris, and London. So that’s part of
what we’re building here, an exhibition that can be
built anywhere by anyone, withstand any weather. It
could be outside or inside, in a public space, or in a
school.”
The photographer doesn’t presume to try to change
people’s attitudes to poverty overnight. Instead,
he sees journalism, including photojournalism, as
cumulative. “I hope viewers will also read an article
or another book that will help them,’” he says. “And
all this together will enlighten people. I certainly
hope that this project will be a part of that puzzle
and help people question their stereotypes about
poverty and who poor people are.”
Progressive Profitable Printing