Julian Germain

Julian Germain (London, 1962) became interested in photography at school. He went on to study it at Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham and the Royal College of Art in London. He has published several books, including ‘In Soccer Wonderland’ (1994) and ‘The Face of the Century’ (1999). His first book, ‘Steel Works’ (1990), utilised 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 industrialisation. 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’.Since 1995 he has been working with Brazilian artists, Patricia Azevedo and Murilo Godoy on a number of photography projects which are conceived and executed as collaborations with groups such as favela communities and street children, who produce the imagery themselves. In 1998, the book ‘No Mundo Maravilhoso do Futebol’ was published by Basalt (the proceeds financing the construction of a library and community centre) and the ‘No Olho da Rua’ project has specialised in bringing imagery made by these marginalised groups directly to the public, in the form of posters displayed on city walls and most recently (July 2007) as a newspaper distributed free on the streets of the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte.
Germain sits on the editorial board of the magazine ‘Useful Photography’ alongside Erik Kessels, Hans van der Meer, Hans Aarsman and Claudi de Cleen. He has exhibited his work internationally, notably at the Photographer’s Gallery, London, Parco Gallery, Tokyo, MASP, Sao Paulo, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead and at Netherlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam. The 2005 exhibition ‘Lifetimes: Portrait Projects by Julian Germain’, at the National Media Museum in Bradford featured a range of work made over numerous years, all sharing Germain’s reflections on the complex nature of existence, including 2 ongoing series, ‘Classroom Portraits’ and ‘Generations’.
He is currently working with the British Council and other organisations on a global project about education scheduled to be a major exhibition and publication in 2010. He is also planning to publish and exhibit photographs made by Brazilian street children over the last 12 years. He lives and works in Northumberland, UK.

Daniel Stier

In 2001 Stier received first prize at the renowned Festival International de Mode et de Photographie in the French town of Hyères. In the following year, his artistic projects were shown in diverse exhibitions such as the Centre National de la Photographie Paris, in the Fotogalerie Vienna, in the Kunstverein artrmx, Cologne and at the Singapore International Photography Festival. Numerous portraits of his are included in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Ali Lomas

i was unable to attend her lecture due to illness and i cannot find her information 

Suki chan

Education
Like many, Chan found the art school environment quite difficult in many ways. However, after graduating in 1999, Chan was approached by an art consultant working for Deutsche Bank and spent months producing a body of work for her consideration. Although this did not lead to Deutsche Bank picking her up in the end, Chan did not see the time spent on it as wasted, as it meant that she averted the ‘post-graduation’ slump many artists experience. Maintaining the momentum for her practice, Chan started applying for opportunities, building contacts that led to future opportunities. a-n Magazine was an important aide at this stage, as Chan found many exhibiting opportunities through open calls to artists.


Exhibitions

In recent years, Chan has exhibited both in the UK and China, building an international profile. As an artist, she feels connected to both places, yet simultaneously in between both of them, a sensibility that is evident in her work, with its emphasis on fragmentation and liminal space. Chan also feels a desire not to be pigeon holed by labels imposed by others. In a sense one can see this in her work also – using tropes associated with both the East and the West and transforming them into something else.

Interestingly, Chan finds there are often differences in how her work is perceived in China and Europe, with Chinese artists often feeling surprised that her work is ‘very Chinese’ as she is (to them) Western, and Westerners commenting on her (and her works) ‘Chinese-ness’. Chan’s work niftily remains resistant to such binary comparisons, finding it’s own space between the two, using the formal and the material to explore ideas around cultural displacement and difference amongst other things.

Chan has also exhibited as part of the Liverpool Biennale, the ‘When in Rome’ touring exhibition as well as spaces in Canada, Serbia, Thailand, the US and Ireland.

i like this image because of the extremely small depth of field