Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene December 2018 Vol.13 No.6 | Page 18

Sanitation
Life without toilets: the photographer
tackling global taboo
A
ndrea Bruce’s prize-winning images from
India, Haiti and Vietnam document the deeply
sensitive issue of open defecation, which affects
1.1 billion of the world’s poorest people
Photographs: Andrea Bruce/NOOR/Eyevine
By Peter Beaumont
“The more I researched it,” says Bruce, “the more I
realised how large a proportion of the world’s population
is living in sewage and without clean water. More people
die of health problems related to sanitation issues every
day than do of malaria, HIV and the top five diseases
combined.”
to the year-long project documenting an issue both deeply
sensitive and hugely important. The resulting photo essay,
commissioned by National Geographic, has been selected
for a first prize in the prestigious Pictures of the Year
awards.
The US photographer, who has covered wars, and
depicted the lives of sex workers in Baghdad after the
US invasion in 2003, recalls: “To be honest, when they
approached me and said, ‘We want you to do a story on
open defecation,’ a million things went through my head.”
Although she says she “does not set herself boundaries”
in advance when working on a photographic project,
Bruce decided she would go with what her subjects found
“acceptable”. She chose as the subject of her work in
India a poor village where she had worked before, and was
familiar to those who lived there.
One of the biggest issues at the intersection of sanitation,
poverty and global health, open defecation has also long
been one of the hardest to represent visually.
For photographer Andrea Bruce, however, the challenge
meant she did not have to think too long before agreeing
A woman looks for a place to defecate on the railway tracks, early in
the morning in the Anna Nagar slum, in Delhi
Bruce’s images – taken in India, Haiti and Vietnam – tell
a compelling and dignified story about a global problem
affecting 1.1 billion of the world’s poorest people.
Phham Thi Lan, 31, and her son, Vinh, four, at Vinh Xuyen
village, Tinh Biên district, Vietnam. Outdoor toilets are often sited
over fish farms in the south of the country
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Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • December 2018
Among that total, according to Unicef, are 524 million
people in India – almost half the country’s population –
where lack of sanitation is estimated to be responsible for
more than a million deaths of children under the age of
five from diarrhoea every year.
“The more I researched it,” says Bruce, “the more I
realised how large a proportion of the world’s population
is living in sewage and without clean water. More people
die of health problems related to sanitation issues every
day than do of malaria, HIV and the top five diseases
combined.”
Although she says she “does not set herself boundaries”
in advance when working on a photographic project,