Photographer Bio Assignment

Biography 

           James Mollison was born in Kenya in 1973 until he was five years old.  He then grew up in England.  He studied Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University, and then studied film and photography at Newport School of Art and Design.  After that moved to Italy to work at Benetton’s creative lab, "Fabrica." Since August 2011 James Mollison has been working in the position of creative editor on "Colors Magazine."  In 2009 he won the Royal Photographic Society’s Vic Odden Award for notable achievement in the art of photography by a British photographer aged 35 or under.  His work has been published throughout the world.  Publishers include: Colors, The New York Times Magazine, the Guardian magazine, The Paris Review, GQ, New York Magazine and Le Monde.  His latest book" Where Children Sleep" was published in November of 2010.  The book is about children all around the world, told through portraits and pictures of their bedroom.  His third book, "Disciples" was published in 2008.  It is in a panoramic format.  It contains portraits of music fans photographed before and after concerts.  In 2007 James published "The Memory of Pablo Escobar."  This book tells the extraordinary story of ‘the richest and most violent gangster in history’ told by hundreds of photographs gathered by Mollison.  It was the follow-up to his work on the great apes, it is widely seen as an exhibition.  It was included at the Natural History Museum, London, and in the book James and Other Apes (Chris Boot, 2004).  Mollison currently lives in Venice with his wife and son.

Why I selected James Mollison

           I selected James Mollison as my photographer because I really liked the book he created called "James & Other Apes."  He said that he noticed that people didn't view monkeys as individuals and he thought it would be interesting to take portraits of them and turn them into individuals.  I really liked the concept.  I also really like the concept behind his book named "Where Children Sleep."  It was very interesting to see how the portrait somewhat reflected what their bedroom was like.  Some children were very spoiled and some were very poor.  I like how he documents more than just the moment of the picture, like journalistic pictures sometimes can.  He documents the person in the picture and the personality or life behind it\

James Mollison

Creative Review, September 2010

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A Page from his book "Where Children Sleep" 

James Mollison

The Diving Bell and the Buterfly

I only saw half of this movie, but I enjoyed what I saw of it.  I really liked how real it seemed when you were looking through the main characters eye.  When he shut his eye, the eyelid looked very real because of the way the light shone through it and made it glow red.  I was always annoyed in movie when a character would fall asleep and their first person eyelids would just look like two black pieces of paper blocking the lens.  Having the main character's eyelid constantly going over the lens added some action to scenes that might be more motionless without that.  Considering that is the only body part he could move.  I think the first person view was really different than anything I have seen before and I liked the narration went with it.