The Whole (Foods) Story

Early September 2009 Whole Foods launched a limited edition t-shirt produced by Hessnatur, proceeds from sales are going to Grameen Shikka, an education program run through Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. The t-shirt will be carried in 125 Whole Foods locations around the country. The text on the t-shirt reads ‘World in Your Hand.’ The night of September 10^th 2009 the t-shirts were set into the window display of Whole Foods in Union Square. That same night I walked though Union Square on my way home, passing the display, as thousands of people do every day.

I looked up and immediately recognized the shirt. The last time I had seen it was in the factory show room of Grameen Knitwear in the Dhaka Export Processing Zone in Bangladesh this past March. I particularly liked that shirt, of all that I saw, and was given one as a gift to bring home from the factory, it’s sitting in my closet now. The moment I saw the shirt in the Whole Foods window I knew I had to find a way to make the connection between my visit to the factory, and the photographs that grew from it, with these shirts and the people who see and buy them here in New York.

The day I visited the Grameen Knitwear factory I knew that the photographs needed to serve not simply as a record of a place and time but as a bridge between worlds. Worlds that I was lucky enough to move between, in an age of globalized production very few people are interested and tenacious enough to witness the global supply chain in action, through tracing a product from its beginning in a factory in the developing world to its end in a window display here in the US. As a t-shirt travels it passes through many hands, in its production and shipping, distribution and sales. This ‘World in Your Hand’ shirt found its way from Bangladesh to New York, and was perched in front of me, drawing for me a clear connection between disparate worlds. The legacy of each pair of hand that touches the shirt is a story that often goes untold.

The men and women I met in the factory were acutely aware of American consumers, as they spend their lives making our clothing. The women in the packing room looked at piles of cardboard advertisements with western women wearing the Grameen Knitwear produced t-shits. They know us. But do we know them? Now, from one storefront in New York to one factory in Bangladesh, we can make that connection. Through this window you can visit the Grameen Knitwear factory and meet some of the people who work there, pick up the t-shirt and know that the world is not only in your hand but in the hands of all those that helped bring the shirt to you. Making that human connection enables us to become more conscious consumers. Every purchase you make effects the lives of the people who produce it, imagine meeting them, looking into their eyes, shaking their hand.