Painfully Simple

All three photo essays were quite eye-opening but the one that I could not stop thinking about once I went through the images was “Where Children Sleep, particularly the image displaying where a 14 year old girl, Jyoti, sleeps in Makwanpur, Nepal. Most of the photographs displayed in the photo essay were very filled (for lack of a better word). The images depicting the extravagant and even what we may consider “average” or “normal” bedrooms were quite filled with typical items you would find in a child’s room; even the images of the horrifying and dilapidated, not rooms, but sections of land in which children must sleep were either filled with dirty mattresses or random, run-down objects. Yet in this photograph of where Jyoti sleeps the location is so bare, so painfully simple.

It fits in well with the other images for it easily contrasts with the more extravagant rooms shown, bringing about the realization of what little so many children around the world actually have. However, this image evokes a shocking amount of sympathy and compassion for this young girl compared to the other images of the worse-than-poor living conditions children must grow up in. There are no random, dirt-covered objects scattered about the area, there are no mattresses covered in old sheets and dust, there is just one straw rug and one blanket.

Those two objects, lit up from the large cracks in the “house” structure, physically show just how little this young girl as well as so many other children have; there are no personal items, no toys, only less than the bare minimum. It almost makes one feel the loneliness she must feel. Just this one image makes me think how frequently she must have to move around and find new places to sleep in, how instead of getting up, getting fed from her parents and going to school as children should be able to do, she must instead find what she needs to survive, every single day. Overall, it makes you feel her exhaustion and her strength.