Classroom Portraits Book Signing
Paris Photo, Grand Palais, Avenue du Général Eisenhower, Paris.Stand D39 (In Camera Gallery), 6pm, November 15th
Paris Photo 2012
Roads to Wigan Pier
Impressions Gallery, Bradford, until 5th January, 2013Russell Boyce, Huw Davies, Julian Germain, Graham Hall, John Kemp, Tim Smith
Impressions Gallery
"In the summer of 1984, taking as their starting point George Orwell’s seminal 1937 publication The Road to Wigan Pier,
a sociological investigation into the bleak living conditions of the
working class in Yorkshire and Lancashire, six newly graduated students
of photography were commissioned by Impressions to record and document
social aspects of the North of England. Each worked independently and
each took a personal viewpoint. These non-judgemental, yet sometimes shocking, photographs show us a way
of life that was in terminal decline. This picture of Orwellian
dystopia acts as an elegy of the northern urban landscape and its
people, on the brink of irrevocable social and cultural change. Today,
in-post industrial Britain, we are perhaps inclined to forget the recent
past as many of the symbols of poverty and neglect have been replaced
by regeneration."
Big Meetings
Woodhorn Museum, Ashington, Northumberland, until December 23rd
Big Meetings is a new
series of photographs and films by Julian Germain in response to the annual
Durham Miners Gala, commissioned by Durham County Council.
Attended by up to 100,000
people, the Gala is one of the largest political gatherings in Europe. As well
as photographing the main event: the parade, speeches and the banner blessings
in the Cathedral, Germain has explored some of the deeper stories behind it.
He records the communities
and landscapes of former pit villages such as Chopwell, Trimdon Grange and
Ferryhill, showing the local residents as they prepare their banners for the
Gala. He has visited band rooms, clubs and community centres to portray the
brass bands in the places where they practice every week and he has also attended
gatherings and meetings of some of the political or campaigning groups who use
the Gala as a platform to promote their ideas.
The 2 synchronised video
portraits feature a 77 year old man and a 9 year old boy performing the protest
song and socialist anthem The Red Flag, encouraging us to consider the dramatic changes that have happened
to industry, culture, society and politics during the last 3 generations.
The exhibition is about
the significance of working class identity and cultural traditions and their
ties to a set of political beliefs at a time when only fragments remain of the
industries that framed them. While documenting both the spectacle and the
spirit of the Gala, Germain is also implicitly asking questions about the
nature of politics now, as capitalism appears to falter and socialist ideals
are widely believed to have been marginalised by the rush to consumerism.
