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Written by asap
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Thursday, 28 December 2006 |
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Moses had a thing about hygiene.
According to the Bible, after he was finished with the whole Ten Commandments thing, he told the Israelites to be sure to go do their business away from camp, and bury it when they were done. Fashion a primitive toilet, so to speak (Deuteronomy, 23:12-13).
So I guess you could say we’ve been concerned with sanitation for a long time. And as we evolved, so did our method of using the bathroom.
Toilets, loos, W.C. lavatory, outhouse — there are many names and even more ways of disposing of our, um, waste products — and photographer Sian James and writer Morna E. Gregory set out to catalog them. They spent about three years traveling to 27 countries on six continents and 161 locations to shoot toilets.
The two were sponsored by hygiene products and collected their findings into “Toilets of the World,” essentially a coffee table book about the wonderful world of loos.
The photos in the book are pristine; nary an errant piece of toilet paper or puddle in sight. Many establishments cleaned the bathrooms before the two came to shoot.
James gave the backstory on a few of her favorite toilets:
LEGO MY BATHROOM
James likes the bright colors in the bathroom at Legoland in England. But the toilets are more than just aesthetically pleasing: They don’t use any water. Urine is trapped under a layer of light sealant and sent down the drain. It saves about 40,000 gallons of water a year.
LOOS IN SPACE
James photographed the prototype for the space station toilet at the New England Air Space Museum in Connecticut. She liked this one because it made her think about how one goes to the bathroom without gravity.
SOLID GOLD TOILET
According to the “Guinness Book of World Records,” it’s the most expensive bathroom in the world, at $3.5 million in Hong Kong. James said if you spend a certain amount of money at the jewelry store you get to use the bathroom for free.
STAGE FRIGHT CITY
The bathrooms at the Tokyo restaurant Ten & Chi are quite possibly the creepiest ever. The men’s room boasts a massive statue of a man who is, um, well-endowed, and when the unsuspecting patron uses the urinal, a booming voice is piped in from above, saying things like “That’s a nice one you have!”
I MISS THE TOILET DOWN IN AFRICA
James said they heard about the sand dunes in Namibia and drove for hours to get to the spot, hoping there’d be a toilet to photograph. They were in luck, but they waited for hours for the right light. “We stayed in this tent out there in the desert,” she said. “It’s just so beautiful and bizarre: What is a toilet doing out there in the middle of a sand dune?” | Only registered users can write comments.
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