Lifetimes: Portrait Projects by Julian Germain closed on 26 February 2006. For details of our current exhibitions, take a look at our what’s on page.
Over five years, Julian Germain captured poignant, deceptively uncomplicated photographs of babies, children, adults and family groups, reflecting on the complex nature of existence.
Biography
Julian Germain trained at Nottingham Trent Polytechnic in the 1980s, and later at the Royal College of Art. His work has evolved from a conventional documentary practise to a more fluid and layered approach to the photograph as document. As a means of exploring personal and institutional histories, Germain’s projects have explored relationships between his own pictures and those produced for commercial and everyday uses. Steel Works (1990) and In Soccer Wonderland (1992) are fine examples of this way of working—the photographer as social historian and archaeologist.
More recently, Germain has concentrated on the social and emotional ties that various forms of portraiture engender. The photographs in Classroom Portraits (2004–05) were taken at state schools around the country; these thoughtful pictures show us something of the interpersonal dynamics of the classroom as well as infinite details of the environment, providing narrative cues to the activities of the group beyond the picture.
© Julian Germain
