Colin Pantall

Colin Pantall is a contemporary European photographer working out of Newport.  He works as a visiting lecturer at the University of Newport, and as a journalist/documentary photographer.

A lot of his work is really interesting, though I focused my attention on his Sofa Portraits series.  In this series, he photographs his daughter while she's sprawled on their sofa watching television.  In his statement about the work, he talks about children needing a space where they can let their imagination run free, and that this sofa is his daughter's such space.

I chose this work because of the raw approach he takes in capturing childhood.  He talks about that space being where his daughter can escape from the world and enter into a dream world of her own choosing; spaces like this are an important and healthy part of childhood, and I think especially so in the case of a child growing up in a dysfunctional environment, which is mostly what my project talks about.  Without a place to escape to, damage from such an environment would be far more extensive and not so easily repaired.