Drone images of India, South Africa offer bird’s-eye view of rich-poor divide around world

A drone image of Mumbai in India, which shows the social inequality between extreme poverty and the luxury. Photos: Johnny Miller

A series of images captured from satellites in the Earth’s atmosphere has highlighted the social imbalance on Earth.

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Of course, differences in social factors, such as access to education, health, hygiene and infrastructure are not entirely visible, but it is a harsh reality.

Luxury homes – some with swimming pools – in the middle-class, tree-lined suburb of Bloubosrand (left), alongside the cramped shacks of the informal settlement of Kya Sands, to the north west of Johannesburg, in South Africa.

For an outsider, the concept of social inequality is not very evident except to those that are experiencing it.

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Photographer Johnny Miller says: “Discrepancies in how people live are sometimes hard to see from the ground.

Discrepancies in how people live are sometimes hard to see from the ground … Often communities of extreme wealth and privilege will exist just metres from squalid conditions and shack dwellings

Johnny Miller, photographer

“Often communities of extreme wealth and privilege will exist just metres from squalid conditions and shack dwellings.”

The cramped shacks which house than 30,000 poor South Africans, located in the informal settlement of Vusimuzi (left), close to wealthier developments just a stone’s throw away in the township of Tembisa, in the northern province of Gauteng.

For a recent project, Miller photographed different cities in the United States, Mexico, Tanzania, Kenya, and India.

The stark discrepancy between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is quite distinct when the photographs are there in front of you.

This drone image perfectly captures the rich-poor divide in South Africa, with some of the 8,500 cramped shacks in the informal settlement of Vusimuzi – home to more than 30,000 poor residents with little or no sanitation or electricity – situated alongside a wealthier suburb in the township of Tembisa in the northern province of Gauteng.

In a few cities the distance between the homes of the poor and the upper middle class are separated only by a road.

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But in one part of Mexico City there is only a fine wall separating the slums from the fortunate.

Another aerial view showing the cramped shacks of the Kya Sands informal settlement on the left of the main road with luxury homes in the middle-class suburb of Bloubosrand on the right, outside Johannesburg, in South Africa.

Miller’s ongoing photo essay, called “Unequal Scenes”, explores many of the world’s biggest cities.

“We are helping to create a visual record of extreme inequality to provoke conversations, increase dialogue, and accelerate the pace of change for equity of all groups of people,” he says.

A drone image above the city of Mumbai, in India, which shows the clear ‘divide’ between the rich and poor, with billion-dollar houses, in the form of skyscrapers, built right beside a vast slum area with shacks covered in blue tarpaulins to help protect them from the monsoon rains.

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