Present day North Korea—Power
How would the meals of the rich differ from that of the poor?
Creatives Henry Hargreaves and Caitlin Levin explore this in their photo series titled ‘Power Hungry’.
Hargreaves told BuzzFeed, “This project began with a look at the foods historical dictators have eaten. Quickly, though, our endeavor evolved as we saw stark similarities between past and present. It became abundantly clear how authoritarian regimes throughout history have used food as a weapon, systematically oppressing, silencing, and killing people through starvation.”
He also added that while the food for the rich were portrayed based on the diets of various ruling authorities, Levin and him made sure that it was “more representative of the excess one percent than individual tastes and quirks.”
Hargreaves and Levin hope that ‘Power Hungry’ can stimulate awareness of the plight that the world’s hungry face.
They wrote: “We want people to literally and figuratively sit down and look across a table to see the glaring disparities between the ‘haves and have nots’. The world has clearly changed tremendously in just a few short decades. Swathes of the world’s people, once routinely afflicted by sweeping hunger, have more regular access to food than before. Indeed, even some poor populations now face a greater threat from obesity than from starvation.
“Yet tremendous imbalances exist in places both far away and closer to home. Many throughout the world are still forced to survive on the most meager of meals, or nothing at all, while a powerful few lavish in absurd culinary luxuries.”
Check out the full series here.
Present day North Korea—Hungry
Ancient Egypt—Power
Ancient Egypt—Hungry
Pre Revolutionary France—Power
Pre Revolutionary France—Hungry
[via BuzzFeed, images and captions via Hargreaves and Levin]