Bridging the Gap

Award-winning photographer and filmmaker Stefen Chow shows us what it means to live in poverty, and the comparative value of need versus want by using visual imagery

- Koyyi Chin

With each passing second, society as a whole develops: we see high-rise buildings left and right, looming over shrinking, under-developed districts; we see new technology invented—it’s better, faster and stronger than ever; we see a world connected by globalisation and saturated with information. ‘We,’ as a society, are constantly moving forward and toward the future. So what happens to those left behind? What happens to those economically incapable of affording the ride? And what does being ‘poor’ truly mean in this day and age? Partnered with economist, market researcher and wife Huiyi Lin, Stefen Chow co-created multiple projects centred on the realities of socioeconomic stratification, namely The Poverty Line and Equivalence – 100:1, forming not only case studies on low income economies, but an objective view of a growing economic divide.

THE POVERTY LINE

It was in 2008, during Chow’s travels in New York City and Kolkata—the capital of India’s West Bengal State— that he asked himself: “was it better to be poor in New York, or Kolkata?”