Julian Germain

Julian Germain is a photographer who came for a talk at college and spoke mostly about his various projects he has done throughout his career.


Early in his career he only used black and white photography as he was inspired by monochrome photography of the early 20th century such as Henri Cartier-Bresson. He then moved onto colour photography and never worked with black and white again as he thought colour was better for portraying the world as the world is in colour. He was also telling us how he likes to present his work in books, and books are a good investment because it's buying lots of art at a very cheap price, so he tries to use photobooks as much as possible.


He went onto tell us about his first project where he spent 18 months working with single parents and families in poverty and developing a relationship with them so that he could take photos of them and of their home. While working with a family he discovered a single mother or was working as a prostitute, so this led onto a project based on prostitution. While talking about these project he highlighted the importance of researching your surroundings of where you work, and of meeting new people and hearing their stories, as it's easier to get by in a new area if you have people to direct you and invite you into their world.

He then told us about a project of taking photos of the same old man called George for 8 years. He went to visit him quite often, not always taking photos, but when he did he took photos of George, his house and places they went together. The next project he told us about was a collection of family snapshots he'd collected from various families over many years and put into one book, like a family album but of lots of different people. He said he found it interesting what was saved if people's memories and showing the age with the faded colours and where some of the photos had torn. From discovering other people's photos, he started a project of working with street children and giving them cameras to take photos of whatever they wanted. He was incredibly impressed with the results as they had no training at all and found it difficult to understand as they were mostly stoned. This then led on to public galleries to help give the kids motivation and raise awareness to their potential.

The next project he told us about where of various elderly people, which led to taking a photo of a century. He took photos of a person who was born in every year of the century. I found this project particularly interesting to see the century through the people that have lived it, and also the link this had to the project on showing different generations on the same family.

He finished by talking about how he is an editor at Useful Photography magazine which explores the different aspects of photography and it's uses, such as photos for missing people. 

I found his talk and work very interesting, but I wish the information was more summarised rather than talking about all his work in the last 20 years as I found it difficult to focus on it all and it was hard to concentrate for so long. Two hours for a lecture on all his projects I think was too long to concentrate properly throughout.