A fun, or is it a confusing, fact about the internet is that you can be reading something and you think that it was written yesterday only to discover that in reality it was written three or more years ago.  Well, OK, today I was reading the New york Times Lens Blog and I came or the little arrow of my pointer wandered upon this posting by Kerri MacDonald from August 4, 2011. Never mind the date.  It is still interesting!  It is a discussion of a then fresh photography book by  James Mollison entitled “Where Children Sleep.”   The project shows pictures of children, each paired with images of their bedrooms.  In a sense it takes you to the anvil of dreams, the very place where childhood dreams are forged.

Two points come out of this work.  First, that children are meant to dream, and second, that because of exploitation many are robbed of this quintessential element of childhood.  I found the captions in LensBlog a little distracting.  I don’t need to be subliminally told what to think.  I prefer looking at Mr. Mollison’s website and feel the emotion, the sadness and the outrage for myself.  These emotions emanate from the power of the images themselves.  And some of these are very powerful images.

The other side of all of this is that for those children, who can dream, their intensity of dreaming is palpable.  We were all children once and we all can remember dreaming of what would be or what could be.  These, as Ms. MacDonald, points out are the essential unifying elements.

“Everybody sleeps. And eventually, everybody grows up.”