Nancy Farese

Book excerpt: It's time to look seriously at child's play. In 2017, award-winning author-photographer Nancy Farese visited Bangladesh to photograph the Rohingya refugee crisis, and she saw firsthand the toll of extreme trauma and the most violent tendencies of humankind. She also saw, everywhere, on the edge of every frame, children at play, following their instinctual drive to adapt, socialize, and heal, in defiance of the darker forces all around them. This documentary photography book by Farese focuses on child's play in fourteen countries. Play is where we learn creativity, collaboration, and the emotional flexibility to survive in a chaotic and ambiguous world. She invites us to consider how this universal activity-and the concept of "free play" as a self-motivated and joyful exploration-is threatened by the unrelenting forces of technology, consumerism, and even overparenting.Potential Space offers a global view of a mundane activity that powerfully shapes who we are both as individuals, and as a society. Play is also where we lose ourselves in time yet find ourselves most fully alive. However, in our modern world free play is under threat, redefined by the converging forces of technology, consumerism, and even overparenting. Farese looks at children's play through a wide lens, providing a look within, and beyond, the challenges of our time toward a more hopeful and resilient perspective. We know it when we see it, anywhere in the world; the beauty of play is that it becomes both a window and a mirror, providing an opening for empathy, and peace.