James Mollison

Career

James Mollison was born in Kenya in 1973 and grew up in England. After study­ing Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University, fol­lowed by Film and Photography at Newport School of Art and Design, he moved to Italy to work at Benetton’s cre­ative research cen­ter, Fabrica.
Since August 2011, Mollison has worked as Creative Director of Colors Magazine along­side Patrick Waterhouse. In 2009, he received the Vic Odden Award from the Royal Photographic Society, rec­og­niz­ing out­stand­ing work by a British pho­tog­ra­pher under the age of 35. 

Visual Style

His work has been widely pub­lished inter­na­tion­ally, includ­ing in Colors, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian Magazine, The Paris Review, GQ, New York Magazine, and Le Monde.
His book Playground was pub­lished in April 2015 by Aperture Foundation — a pho­to­graphic series explor­ing school play­grounds around the world.

Major Series and Works

His third book, The Disciples, was pub­lished in 2008 and fea­tures panoramic por­traits of music fans pho­tographed before and after con­certs.
His fourth book, Where Children Sleep, was pub­lished in November 2010 and presents sto­ries of chil­dren around the world through por­traits and pho­tographs of their bedrooms.

Recognition

In 2007, he pub­lished The Memory of Pablo Escobar—the extra­or­di­nary story of “the rich­est and most vio­lent gang­ster in his­tory,” told through hun­dreds of pho­tographs col­lected by James Mollison.
This was fol­lowed by his work on great apes, which achieved con­sid­er­able suc­cess as an exhi­bi­tion — includ­ing at London’s Natural History Museum — as well as through his book James & Other Apes (Chris Boot, 2004).

Reading the Work

James Mollison’s work finds its bal­ance in con­cep­tual and doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy built around iden­ti­ties, liv­ing envi­ron­ments, and cul­tural sys­tems. It is dis­tin­guished by a clear method­ol­ogy, a strong social focus, and an abil­ity to make com­plex human real­i­ties vis­i­ble. Viewing his images rewards close atten­tion to nuance: a com­po­si­tional detail, a way of main­tain­ing dis­tance from the sub­ject, a qual­ity of light, or a tex­ture often reveals their deeper meaning.