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Karla Yazmin Teran Huerta

ENGL 107-016

Professor Edmiston

16 February 2017

James Mollison Journal

1. How would you describe the main idea of Mollisons work? What is the

dominant impression created by his mix of words and pictures? The main idea of James

Mollisons work is to present how many children around the world are living, how the

bedroom of one of them looks like and the different stories that they have. The dominant

impression created by his mix of words and pictures is to be realistic about how many

children are living, some of them are living without any necessity such as Jivan who lives

in New York, which the photo of his bedroom is just amazing. Also, some of the children

around the world are living in poor conditions such as a boy who is living in Rome, Italy,

which his house is a mattress in a field on the outskirts of the city, but he is not arguing

about the issue of poverty and wealth.

2. Mollison states his purpose for this photo essay as wanting to share in

pictures and words the stories that [he] found interesting, or that moved [him]. If his

purpose had been to argue or analyze the issues of poverty and wealth (or some other

theme) what changes do you think Mollison would have made to his approach? I

believe he could photograph children with an extreme poverty and children with wealth. He

could present the incoming of every childrens family and analyze how the different

incomes of money are reflected in how the childrens bedrooms look like.
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3. As you look at the photographs and their accompanying text, consider this

statement from Mollison:

The book is written and presented for an audience of 9-13 year olds

intended to interest and engage children in the details of the lives of other

children around the world, and the social issues affecting them, while also

being a serious photographic essay for an adult audience.

How successfully do you think Mollisons work reaches each of those audiences? What

do you see in Mollisons writing style and in the composition of his photographs that

would appeal to adults and to older children?

I believe that Mollisons work reaches successfully to both audiences because he is

doing a great job explaining the photos and presenting the children. Although he is doing a

great job presenting the images to reach both audiences, the way he is writing the history of

each child in each picture cant be considered inappropriate to some older children. I

believe he is appealing to adults only, and he could be less rude in the way he explains

some of the childrens histories.