Julian Germain is a London based photographer. He has published several books, including ‘In Soccer Wonderland’ (1994) and ‘The Face of the Century’ (1999). His first book, ‘Steel Works’ (1990), utilized a combination of his own photographs alongside historical images and pictures from various sources including family albums to examine the effects of the closure of Consett steelworks as well as broader issues of post industrialization. Julian’s continued belief in the value of amateur and ‘functional’ images is also reflected in his recent book, ‘For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness’, published by SteidlMack in 2005, and also in his project ‘The Running Line’, a sculptural installation in Saltwell Park, Gateshead in 2007, of more than 139,000 pictures made by amateur and professional photographers of the previous year’s ‘Great North Run’.
He published a book called ‘Classroom portraits’ it’s an ongoing series that began in schools in North England In 2004and was extended to schools the UK the following year. Since 2005 the archive has grown to include schools from North and South America, Europe and the Middle East. I love most of the images in this book, I like how is displays different cultures and their education system. I find that I can study a single images for a while, their just photo you can fully understand from glancing at, there busy and chaotic but not in an unprofessional way. Each pupil has a different expression to look at or a certain body language, then you can go from studying a single person to the whole class, what’s in the background, how there seated, etc.
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I can't say the lecture was the best i've attended as it was a little dim, but it allowed me to understand how he works and what the picture mean in a more detail analyst.
