Philip Gourevitch on James Nachtwey's startling photos of Indonesian street kids, in the May/June issue of Mother Jones:

The children Nachtwey came to know over the last six years at the Mangga Besar (Big Mango) train station forged their own society. They survived by begging and, when that failed, by stealing—on a small-time, subsistence level—and they sniffed glue not only to get high but also to allay their constant hunger. “They were truly outcasts, surviving on the narrowest of margins, and as such were virtually invisible,” Nachtwey says. In exposing themselves to his camera, they made themselves seen. They were not, however, looking to return to the society that had abandoned them. When shopkeepers complained of their presence on the sidewalk, the police would round them up and send them to social services homes for street kids, but, Nachtwey says, “Despite the guarantee of security, a clean, relatively comfortable place to sleep, and a couple of decent meals each day, the children dreaded such places. The kids had become essentially wild, and as addicted to freedom as they were to glue."