Jonas Bendiksen & Philip Gourevitch talk

Aperture is pleased to present an important discussion between Magnum photographer Jonas Bendiksen and noted author Philip Gourevitch on the occasion of the recently released Aperture book The Places We Live, photographs by Jonas Bendiksen, introduction by Philip Gourevitch. A unique multimedia exhibition of this work is currently on view at the Nobel Peace Center, Oslo, Norway, until February 2009.

The year 2008 has witnessed a major shift in the way people across the world live. For the first time in human history more people live in cities than in rural areas. This triumph of the urban, however, does not entirely represent progress, as the number of people living in urban slums will soon exceed one billion. From 2005 to 2007, Bendiksen documented life in the slums of four different cities: Nairobi, Kenya; Mumbai, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Caracas, Venezuela. His intimate, yet powerful images, coupled with moving stories from the people living within these cities, are brought together for the time in this extraordinary monograph.

Through an innovative design of double-gatefold images, The Places We Live brings the modern-day Dickensian reality of these individuals into sharp focus.

A member of Magnum Photos, Jonas Bendiksen (born in Tønsberg, Norway, 1977) has received numerous awards, including the 2003 Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, and first prize in the Pictures of the Year International Awards. His photographs have appeared in National Geographic, GEO, Newsweek, and the Sunday Times Magazine, among other publications. His bestselling first book, Satellites: Photographs from the Fringes of the Former Soviet Union, was published in 2006 by Aperture. In 2007, the Paris Review received a National Magazine Award for Bendiksen’s project The Places We Live. He is also the most recent winner of the National Geographic Photography Grant, and is the first Norwegian photographer to become a member of Magnum Photos.

Philip Gourevitch (born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1961) is an author, journalist and now editor of the Paris Review. Gourevitch has published articles for many prestigious publications including Harper’s and The New York Times Magazine, and has been a longtime staff writer of The New Yorker. Among his most famous books are Standard Operating Procedure (a collaboration with Errol Morris), and We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1998). The latter reports on the genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath. This book has been awarded by the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Award, and in England, The Guardian First Book Award, among others.