PLAYGROUND
Shohei elementary school, tokyo

source: g1globo

O novo projeto do fotógrafo britânico James Mollison, Playground, foi influenciado pelas experiências do fotógrafo, que sofreu bullying em pátios de escolas onde estudou. Nestas fotos, ele explora como os relacionamentos são gerenciados através de brincadeiras.

“Comecei o projeto na Grã-Bretanha, revisitando minha escola e algumas escolas próximas. Fiquei fascinado pela diversidade das experiências das crianças, dependendo da escola delas”, escreveu o fotógrafo.
“Os contrastes entre escolas britânicas despertaram minha curiosidade para saber como outras escolas eram em outros países.”

As várias cenas de risos, lágrimas e jogos mostram as experiências intensas que acontecem nesta área de lazer. Ao mostrar escolas ricas e pobres em países e locais que vão dos Estados Unidos ao Butão e até Belém, na Cisjordânia, o trabalho reflete a diversidade de ambientes e recursos.
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source: maxitendance

Ces aires de jeu où les enfants apprennent pour la première fois l’art des relations et à se trouver une place dans le monde ont pour cadre aussi bien les montagnes que les palmiers mais aussi les zones urbaines de forte densité. Ces éclectiques toiles de fond parsèment les visuels du photographe kenyan : une pelouse verte délimitant ces zones pour certains, pour d’autres la terre nue.

La plupart du temps on ne trouve guère d’espaces de jeux aménagés et autres balançoires mais de grands espaces où la seule frontière est l’horizon. Mais c’est aussi un formidable kaléidoscope de la diversité de notre monde et de ses inégalités lorsqu’il choisit de photographier tant les écoles pauvres que les riches dans des pays comme l’Argentine, le Boutan, la Bolivie, l’Inde, Israël, l’Italie, le Japon mais aussi le Kenya, le Népal, la Norvège, la Sierra Leone sans oublier le Royaume-Uni et les Etats-Unis.

Quant au photographe il est récemment retourné dans son ancienne école et en a profité pour en visiter une autre à proximité. Les différences entre ces deux structures étaient parlantes : celui-ci réalisa combien ceci pouvait avoir un impact sur la vie future et affecter profondément l’expérience commune de tout enfant. Cette série est aujourd’hui devenue un livre disponible ici.
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source: domuswebit

Per il suo ultimo progetto, Playground – culminato in un libro fotografico pubblicato dalla Aperture Foundation – James Mollison ha fotografato i bambini che giocano nei cortili delle loro scuole, ispirato dai ricordi della sua infanzia e interessato a come tutti noi impariamo a negoziare le relazioni e il nostro posto nel mondo attraverso il gioco.
Immagini di risate, lacrime, e giochi dimostrano le esperienze intense che avvengono in un parco giochi. Per ogni immagine, Mollison ha catturato con la sua macchina fotografica il tempo dell’intervallo, raccogliendo più fotogrammi e componendo ogni immagine finale a partire da diverse scene, nelle quali si ritrova la narrazione del gioco.
Con fotografie di scuole ricche e povere, numerose scuole medie, e alcune scuole superiori, in paesi come Argentina, Bhutan, Bolivia, India, Israele, Italia, Giappone, Kenya, Nepal, Norvegia, Sierra Leone, Regno Unito e Stati Uniti, Mollison offre anche una chiave di lettura sulle questioni legate alla diversità globale e alla disuguaglianza.
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source: wired

KIDS ARE KIDS the world over—they love to run and yell and play in the sun. The difference is where it happens. Children at a school in Bethlehem take recess behind thick walls to protect them from gunfire, while youngsters in Tokyo amuse themselves on a rooftop seven stories up. Playgrounds vary by location and circumstance, but play remains the same.

Photographer James Mollison fondly remembers his own school days and photographed children around the world for Playground. Over the past five years, he has visited more than a dozen countries, ranging from the US to Kenya, and Norway to Bolivia. The images are stunning in their color and size, and use socio-economic, cultural and political elements as backdrops.

“There was an incredible similarity between the way kids played everywhere—and although the building, landscape, or facilities of the schools were very different, there was hardly any difference between the kids’ behavior in Los Angeles, Nepal or in Kenya,” Mollison says.

Though the photos are bursting with energy, the series also highlights the underlying dramas that unfold on every playground—the fights, the teasing, the minuscule yet monumental humiliations and glories. He experienced this firsthand working on the project. Once he finally convinced schools to let him shoot, Mollison sometimes had to deal with children taunting him. “I went to these inner city schools [in London] and they were pretty hard there,” he says. “At one school I had this kid that was wobbling my tripod. When I asked him to stop, he said, ‘No, you’re shooting porn!’ I’d be called a pedophile.”

To capture the rupturing sense of everything happening simultaneously, Mollison’s final photos are composites of several frames. Setting up his camera in one location, he shoots throughout a recess period, then seamlessly combines the most intriguing elements into one image. Mollison argues the final photos are stronger, conveying a “play narrative” that exudes the emotions of the children. It also allows for a strange sort of time-lapse to occur, one where you see the actions of everyone in frame simultaneously.

“There might be multiple things happening everywhere. I haven’t manipulated them in the sense that I’ve created lots of children when there are only a few or creating something that didn’t really happen,” Mollison says. “I think I almost intensified the moment.”
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source: apertureorg

In conjunction with the publication of the book Playground, featuring photographs by James Mollison, Aperture Foundation presents an exhibition of the series. Mollison’s photo projects are defined by smart, original concepts applied to serious social and environmental themes. For Playground, Mollison photographed children at play in their school playgrounds, inspired by memories of his own childhood and interested in how we all learn to negotiate relationships and our place in the world through play.

Various scenes of laughter, tears, and games demonstrate the intense experiences which happen in the playground. For each picture, Mollison sets up his camera during school break time, making multiple frames and then composing each final photograph from several scenes, in which he finds revealing “play” narratives.

With photographs from rich and poor schools, numerous middle schools, and some high schools, in countries including Argentina, Bhutan, Bolivia, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Nepal, Norway, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., Mollison also provides access for readers of all ages to issues of global diversity and inequality.

James Mollison’s (born in Kenya, 1973) work has been featured widely in such publications as Colors, the New York Times Magazine, and the Paris Review, among many others. He has also published several books, among them James and Other Apes (2004), The Disciples (2008), and Where Children Sleep (2010).
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source: jamesmollison

James Mollison was born in Kenya in 1973 and grew up in England. After studying Art and Design at Oxford Brookes University, and later film and photography at Newport School of Art and Design, he moved to Italy to work at Benetton’s creative lab, Fabrica. Since August 2011 Mollison has been working as a creative editor on Colors Magazine with Patrick Waterhouse. 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 widely published throughout the world including by Colors, The New York Times Magazine, the Guardian magazine, The Paris Review, GQ, New York Magazine and Le Monde. His latest book Playground was published in April 2015 by Aperture Foundation- a series of composites of moments that happened during a single break time, a kind of time-lapse photography. His fourth book Where Children Sleep was published in November 2010- stories of diverse children around the world, told through portraits and pictures of their bedroom. His third book, The Disciples was published in 2008 – panoramic format portraits of music fans photographed before and after concerts. In 2007 he published The Memory of Pablo Escobar– 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 – widely seen as an exhibition including at the Natural History Museum, London, and in the book James and Other Apes (Chris Boot, 2004).
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source: wiredjp

世界中のどこに行っても子どもは子ども。彼らは太陽の下、大声をあげて走り回って遊ぶのが大好きだ。違いがあるとすればその“場所”で、ベツレヘムの学校の子どもたちは銃弾から身を守る分厚い壁の向こうで休憩時間を過ごし、東京の子どもたちは7階の屋上で遊びまわる。
写真家、ジェームズ・モリソンは、自分の子ども時代を懐かしく思い出しながら、世界中で子どもたちが遊ぶ姿を撮影し、写真集「Playground」として発表した。この5年間、彼は米国、ケニア、ノルウェー、ボリビアなど十数カ国を訪れた。写真は色彩もスケールも素晴らしく、その背景には社会経済状況や文化、政治といった要素が映し出されている。
「子どもたちが遊ぶ姿は、どこにいても驚くほど似ていました。建物や風景、学校の設備はまったく違っても、子どもたちの行動は、ロサンゼルスでもネパールでもケニアでも、ほとんど違いがないんです」と、モリソンは言う。
写真は活気に満ち溢れているが、そこにはどの校庭でも起きている隠れたドラマも映し出されている。けんか、いじめ、そしてスケールこそ極小だが決して忘れられない屈辱や喜び──。
彼自身も、そんな瞬間をプロジェクトのなかで実際に経験した。学校からなんとか撮影許可を取り付けても、モリソンはときに子どもたちがからかうのに耐えなければならなかったのだ。「（ロンドンの）インナーシティの学校に行ったときは大変でした。ある学校で三脚を揺する男の子がいて、わたしはやめてと頼みました。すると彼は『ポルノを撮ってるんだろ！』と言いだして、わたしを小児性愛者よばわりしたんです」
いろいろなことが同時に起きている“爆発的な感覚”をとらえるため、モリソンの最終的な作品は数フレームを合成したものになっている。カメラを1カ所に設置して、彼は休み時間中ずっと撮影を続け、最も印象的な瞬間を1枚の写真に滑らかに合成した。最終的な写真はより強烈で、子どもたちの感情にあふれた「遊びの物語」を伝えている、とモリソンは言う。また、これにより不思議なある種のタイムラプスのような表現も生まれていて、すべての子どもたちの動きが同時にフレームに収まっているように見える。
「あちこちで複数のことが起こっていたのでしょう。加工したわけではありません。わたしは子どもの数を増やしたり、実際には起きていないことを創作したりはしていませんから。わたしは瞬間の感度を高めただけです」