4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling call for action in photos/words to help kids, April 28, 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Lost Futures: Our Forgotten Children (Hardcover)
The tear falling from the eye of a starving Haitian infant on the cover of "LOST FUTURES: OUR FORGOTTEN CHILDREN," by photographer and writer Stan Grossfeld isn't the only one that will fall in this important, powerful and provocative new book.
Most readers will also leave their tears somewhere in this book. But it should also prompt people to action.
Grossfeld, in dramatic photographs and text, is unrelenting in his determination to make people confront themselves and, in page after page, ask how the most innocent and helpless among us could be at best so neglected, and at worst, so horribly abused and maltreated.
"Can it be our wealth means so much to us that we have lost sight of those who have nothing?" Muhammad Ali asks in his foreword.
"The children in these pictures speak to us. They urge us to pray," says a message from Mother Teresa.
For much of this decade Grossfeld, a photographer for The Boston Globe, traveled the United States and the world to document the treatment of children -- particularly the hopeless, lost and abandoned.
Adults are few and far between in the book. Some of the few shown are the heros, such as Richard Serino, head of Boston's Emergency Medical Services. Sometimes they are the mothers and fathers, struggling with the little they have -- often no more than a hug and empathetic tears -- to help their children.
There are other adults:
-- The soldiers in Northern Ireland seemingly in the midst of combat while a child plays nearby.
-- The man smoking a cigarette as he gropes a 15-year-old prostitute in Bangkok -- a young girl who says she needs money for a new roof for her family home.
-- The prisoners at Rikers Island in New York City who bury infants on Hart Island. The wood boxes -- piled seven deep, more than 1,000 a year -- contain the bodies of babies who were stillborn, or lived just a few days or hours, victims mostly of AIDS or drug addiction passed on from their mothers.
Far too many children in the world, Grossfeld's book reveals, learn at too early an age that life is difficult. Mineirinho, a street child in Rio, knows it -- and finds his escape by inhaling glue. Like Veronica, an abandoned 16-year-old who lives in a sewer and only sees the police when they come to rape her, Mineirinho says the glue is recreation and escape. "If we want rain, we get rain. if we want a rainbow, we get a rainbow."
"LOST FUTURES" isn't just a compilation of good work by a talented photographer and writer.
It is a good work in progress. The last section, HOPE FOR THE FUTURE, lists resources and agencies working to end many of the conditions Grossfeld exposes. Also, all of Grossfeld's royalties are being donated to the U.S. Committee for UNICEF, (http://www.unicefusa.org) the United Nations Childrens Fund.
See the world, the children of the world, through Grossfeld's eyes. Readers will leave, at least, a tear.
In his preface, Grossfeld implores:
"Take a tour of the planet with me, and think about what you could do to make a difference. One thing I learned is this: Everyone can do something. The first step is home. ...
"Take a tour of the planet with me and listen to these children. ...
"Take a tour of the planet, and see what we do to children in the name of God. ...
"Take a tour of the planet, and instead of thinking, 'There's nothing I can do,' ask, 'What can I do to change this.' ...
"Take a tour of the planet, and know the boundless horrors to which innocent children are subjected. ...
"Take a tour of the planet but instead of entering the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida, stop and see the children of migrant workers living nearby. ...
"Take a tour of the planet, and see how the spotlight of world attention shines brightly and passes into the shadow. ..."
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No