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.
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. Swaths 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.
These are just a small sampling of the communities where such contradictions exist.
A collaboration between Henry Hargreaves and Caitlin Levin
