Trick or Treat: Kids in Their Halloween Costumes

“I have always been interested in young people and Halloween always miffed me slightly as it seemed like a bizarre contradiction that young innocent children should choose to dress up as characters that haunt their nightmares,” says British photographer Laura Pannack, who shot the project several years ago on the spur of the moment.

“I used to live on a very very steep hill called Elm Grove in Brighton. Everyday I would pass a primary school and about a month before Halloween I knew I wanted to shoot something related, so I started speaking to local parents and schools. [In the end] my only option was to arrive the day of the party and ask each of the parents; so I piled with model release forms and letters of explanation and I waited at the school.”

Using the limited natural light available on a cold October evening, she produced the series of portraits of these young kids as they left their school’s party. “I thought it was an ironic and a confusing tradition and I wanted the children to appear quite naive in my photographs,” she says.

Laura Pannack is a British photographer based in London and a recipient of the World Press Photo 1st Prize, Portrait Singles.