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This book, like the first, is the brainchild of Menzel. But this time he stayed home. After a few attempts at interviewing women with a gender-mixed team of photographers, journalists, and interpreters, Menzel and D'Aluisio discovered the wisdom of sending all females. The result: these women felt immensely more at home and were decidedly more candid in the presence of other women.
The families chosen are not the poorest nor the wealthiest of any nation, but the statistically average. For Material World, Menzel painstakingly researched profiles from many nations, and even apportioned his choices along demographic lines with Asia getting the largest share. From this original mix, he chose the women for the new book, adding a family from Jordan in place of the one from Kuwait, which declined the invitation to participate again.
From 50,000 pictures and 160 hours of interviews, the editors sculpted a book with 375 color photographs of the women, their children, their husbands, and their habits and habitats. Woven into this tapestry are photo essays focusing on specific subjects such as marriage, laundry, hair, food, and water. In these asides we learn, for example, that more than half of the women do the laundry without the benefit of a mechanical device, many must perform arduous tasks to procure potable water, and that hair care is a universal preoccupation.
The photographs -- from the double-spread extravaganzas and full-page bleeds to the collections of smaller yet captivating scenes -- are the heart of the book, but to describe them diminishes their impact. Let's just say they make Life magazine and National Geographic seem like amateurs. Even young children who cannot yet read receive an education in global relations. Each photograph is a treasure of information. You will find yourself peeking into refrigerators, scrutinizing meals laid out on the family table, peering into closets, glimpsing unmade beds, and becoming very much at home with families who seem to have forgotten that the photographer is present.
As Naomi Wolf says in the introduction, "The lush magnificence of these images makes it easy for outsiders to see and validate the subjects -- something that in the long run, in an information empire, may help determine whether these communities thrive or suffer."
But do not neglect the words. Women in the Material World is an intriguing approach to geography, social studies, politics, humanities, and psychology. The interviews are powerful and probing, each woman's statistical profile and that of her nation provides foundation for the stories, and the journalists' field notes make the experiences personal. The interviews are rich and real. These women do not always say what you expect. Their stories and pictures tell it like it is. No Hollywood. Just life. In all its diversity, pain, dirt, mud, sadness, and joy.
Eleanor K. Sommer is a writer and editor in Gainesville, Florida.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.