Poverty Line

How the poor eat: an ambitious visual anthropology of diet and poverty in 36 case studies across the world. To demonstrate what it means to live at the poverty line, Beijing-based artist duo Stefen Chow and Huiyi Lin visited 36 countries and territories on six continents - from Germany and China to New York and London - examining poverty with regard to food. From local markets, they bought vegetables, fruits, cereal products, proteins and snacks, basing the amount of food they could afford per day on the respective poverty-line definition set by each government. The duo photographed the resulting food, placed on a page of a local newspaper bought that day, calibrating lighting and shooting distance to ensure uniformity and comparability. In addition, the duo selected nine foods available in most of the economies observed to illustrate the globalization of production and the variations in prices and consumption. With this brilliantly conceived project, Chow and Lin render the problem of poverty visible and comprehensible to all. AUTHORS: Stefen Chow and Huiyi Lin are CHOW AND LIN. The crux of their practice lies in their methodology of statistical, mathematical and computational techniques to address global issues since 2009. 368 illustrations