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Picture Perfect: James Mollison

Picture Perfect brought James to Kenya, where he was born, to photograph the faces of Dadaab, the world's oldest and largest refugee camp..

Picture Perfect visits British photographer James Mollison at his studio in Venice, Italy where he explains the importance of repetition and grids that make up the portrait series he is known for.

Picture Perfect brought James to Kenya, where he was born, to photograph the faces of Dadaab, the world's oldest and largest refugee camp that sits in the desert in the northeast of the country.  Built to house 90,000 people, Dadaab now has a population of over 300,000 with 1,300 new refugees arriving every day. Made-up of three camps, Hagadera, Ifo and Dagahaley, the refugees arrive from Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan and all across the horn of Africa fleeing civil war, drought and famine.

James set out to photograph the huge variety of people that live in the camps, from new arrivals to third generation children. He set up simple backdrops that remove the subject from the chaos that surrounds them to create striking personal portraits that convey the emotion and life that make up the sprawl.