The Poverty Line
Authored by Chow and Lin, with contributions by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, Andrea Brandolini, Lucas Chancel and John Micklewright.
The Poverty Line uses food to examine the daily choices people face living at the poverty line. The book is authored by artistic duo Chow and Lin, consisting of Mr Stefen Chow (Engineering ’03), an award-winning photographer; and economist Ms Lin Huiyi (Arts and Social Sciences ’03), who travelled 200,000 kilometres across six continents and documented poverty in 36 countries and territories. The couple studied official as well as proxy definitions of the poverty line in each country, creating a growing conversation that questions the understanding of poverty and inequality.
Traversing cultures and economic systems, the book presents objective, non-emotional observations of our own circumstances, framed against the fragile balance of social structures, growth and divide in an entangled, globalised world.
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“The cumulative effect of viewing morsel after morsel of delicious food is hunger — a response that feels fitting for a book dedicated to making poverty palpable by expressing it literally, as sustenance, or lack thereof.
MoMA Magazine