Material World: A Global Family Portrait.

In 1955, Edward Steichen described The Family of Man, the landmark Museum of Modern Art photography collection he conceived and directed - and published in book form - as "a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world." A visually poetic celebration of the unity of the human race and its experiences - birth, death, love, joy, sorrow, faith - the book awakened many of its readers (including this reviewer, who found it on his parents' bookshelf at an early age) to the world's rich variety of cultures.

Forty years later, Material World: A Global Family Portrait attempts to go a step further: to show not only the common threads, but the shocking differences in how people live as we approach the end of the twentieth century. For the 1994 United Nations International Year of the Family, project director Peter Menzel (who conceived the book) and 16 other photographers created a collection of images that says more about the current variety of human conditions than a stack of UN statistical yearbooks. First published in 1994, the book was recently released in paperback by Sierra Club Books and on a CD-ROM (which includes many additional photos and data on the families and their countries) by StarPress Multimedia.

With assistance from data experts at the UN and the World Bank, Menzel and his team set out to define the "average family" in 30 representative countries around the world. Among the criteria considered were location (urban, rural, suburban, small town, village), type of dwelling, family size, income, occupation, and religion. Then, with the help of local sources, a photographer located a suitable family and moved in with them for a week, documenting their lives on film.

Material World's unique appeal lies in the way the families are presented. Each family was asked to sit for a portrait outside their home, surrounded by all their material belongings - which were painstakingly brought out for the photo session. Family members were asked to select and pose near those possessions they valued the most highly. For each family, this "big picture," as Menzel calls it, is then followed by other photos of the family's daily life.

The resulting photos (all in color) are a remarkable record of the variety of typical living conditions. Some show extreme affluence, such as the six-member Abdulla family of Kuwait (and their two Indian servants) with their four automobiles, 45-foot (14 meter)-long sofa, and dozens of other possessions outside a nearly 5,000-square-foot home with indoor swimming pool. Others display heartbreaking poverty, such as that of a Haitian family of six who share a 324-square-foot, tin-roofed shack. The Delfoarts are so poor that when asked what were their most valued possessions, both parents replied that they owned nothing of value. The Natomo family of Mali sits smiling broadly for the camera on the roof of their baked clay house amidst a few clay pots and baskets; the Ukita family of Japan poses impassively amidst enough consumer goods to fill a small department store.

Unlike The Family of Man, Material World includes a substantial amount of text and statistical information. Each country is profiled, with a variety of basic statistics, including population density, fertility rate, population doubling time, percentage of urban and rural residents, life expectancy, infant mortality, and other facts of interest. Next to the country's profile is one of the family, with such facts as the size of their home, hours worked per week, number of various possessions (telephones, radios, televisions, automobiles), most valued possessions, and their wishes for the future. Each family was asked a standard set of 66 questions. Though individual families' actual incomes are not listed (for reasons of privacy), national per-capita incomes provide a close match.

The book is filled with memorable photos. The Demirovic family of Sarajevo, Bosnia, pose outside their artillery-torn apartment building with a bullet-riddled truck, UN soldiers, and an armored personnel carrier behind them. The Kalnazarovs, of Uzbekistan, stand in the snow in front of their home with their possessions, which seem to consist overwhelmingly of brightly colored quilts and rugs. The Namgays, of Bhutan, cradle their statue of the Buddha and other sacred items; the Skeens of Texas hold their family Bible. Behind them, an American flag hangs from the garage between two deer heads.

The one family that did not pose outside their home produced one of the book's most striking images - a Mongolian ger, or tent house, much like those still used by nomadic herdsmen in the countryside, but now also providing shelter to thousands of recent migrants to the outskirts of the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar. For the photo, the roof was simply folded back to reveal the contents: the Regzen family, two beds, a dresser, china cabinets, a dinner table, a washbasin, a television (the father's most valued possession), a carved wooden Buddha (the mother's dearest item) and more. From their ger, the Regzens commute to jobs in the city.

Three special two-page spreads illustrate common elements from around the world: meals, toilets, and televisions. The meals range from starkly simple - rice and fish cooked over an open fire in Mali, plain sweet potatoes in Haiti - to sumptuous and colorful, such as the paella served in Spain. The toilets include a black, laquered commode with gilt trim and matching bidet in Kuwait, and a grove of trees in Ethiopia. Televisions are almost - but not quite - in every home.

Material World shows extraordinary disparities in listing conditions, health, life expectancy, income, and other measures of well-being. No one would want to be - or should have to be - as poor as some of the less-fortunate families shown. But at the same time, one wonders if some of the wealthier families shown might wish to trade much of their consumer goods and modern conveniences for the strength of community and culture displayed in many of the photos from developing countries. In the end, Material World offers powerful testimony that rich lives do not necessarily stem from material wealth.