[ dabble ] Classroom Portraits

A while back we put up a post in [ dabble ] called “Where Children Sleep”, highlighting the work of photographer James Mollison as he snapped pictures of children and their bedrooms all over the world.

His crazy cool series captured a whole lot of diversity and allowed the viewer, in some small way, to step into the shoes of the other, catching a glimpse of life from a different perspective. Capturing the diversity also reinforced a feeling of sameness, as beyond the massive differences of all the children and where they lay down to sleep, was the fact that they were all just kids, shaped by different circumstances.

English photographer Julian Germain has used his camera machine in much the same way as Mollison and put together a series entitled “Classroom Portraits”, snapping classrooms and the pupils that fill them, from all around the world.

Germain examines one of life’s basic rights, an education, through the range of different classrooms and the pupils that sit inside them. Whether it’s a few teenagers sitting at polished desks in night time Tokyo or an overflowing classroom of boys learning English in Yemen, the diversity is obvious, but so to is the sameness of youth reaching to learn.

Here is what Archive Magazine had to say about Classroom Portraits:

“….the power of the images is in their direct connection to the viewer. We remember our own schooldays and wonder what happened to our own classmates. By presenting different pupils, different schools, different year groups, Germain asks questions about contemporary educational practices and social divisions. Already we can imagine the life trajectories of some of these young people. Here are faces full of hope and promise. Here also, is the silent threat of failure. Aspiration competes with apathy…..”
Tom Shakespeare. Archive Magazine

Check out the full series HERE.