James Mollison: Where Children Sleep
James Mollison was born in Kenya in 1973 and grew up in England. He studied Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University, then went on to study film and photography at Newport School of Art and Design. After that, he moved to Italy, working at Benetton’s creative lab, Fabrica. Mollison has been working as a creative editor with Patrick Waterhouse on Colors Magazine since August 2011. He won the Royal Photographic society’s Vic Odden Award in 2009 for notable achievement in the art of photography by a British photographer ages 35 or under.
Bedrooms are separate places where each person personalizes and fills with pieces of themselves in order to flrm their own special world, whether shared or not.
Mollisons book Where Children Sleep, published in November 2010, shows stories of diverse children around the world using portraits of them alongside photographs of their sleeping space. This project takes us to many different places, capturing the cultural similarities and differences we all face with others around the world. It focuses on each child’s “material and cultural circumstances”.
In an interview with Huffington Post, Mollison was asked how he got int touch with the children he photographed, to which he explained that he did so from gaining access while working in different places, such as for Save The Children in Nepal, China and The West Bank, however he also felt it was important to work with the children outside of the aid world. He would send a list of ideas of children that interested him to a local producer who worked to get the access, also like how he worked in countries like Brazil, Japan and America. Some of the other children he found whilst on other photographic job assignments.
When asked what he hoped people would take away from this series, he replied, “We tend to inhabit a small world of friends, family, work, school etc. I hope the book gives a glimpse into the lives some children are living in very diverse situations around the world; a chance to reflect on the inequality that exists, and realise just how lucky most of us in the developed world are.”














