Classroom Portraits by Julian Germain, made from 2004 to 2015 in British and international schools, portrays children and adolescents within the classrooms where they study. The series began with a 2004 commission to photograph six schools in northeast England, after Germain accompanied his daughter on her first day of school. From 2005, travel and further commissions expanded the archive to more than 450 portraits across over 20 countries.
By replacing the standardized backdrop of the traditional class photograph with the everyday classroom, Germain examines education as both a shared structure and a locally specific experience. Differences emerge through resources, clothing, religion, politics, popular culture, and classroom organization. The project also addresses memory and growing up, presenting school as a formative environment while directing attention toward the pupils' future adulthood. Teachers remain outside the frame, yet adult authority persists in curricula, buildings, books, furniture, and uniforms.
This interplay of common structure and local detail organizes the visual language. In color photographs, rows or clusters of pupils face the camera from their ordinary seats while desks, boards, notices, written work, displays, and institutional furnishings remain visible. The framing is frontal, with the camera occupying the teacher's usual position at or just above pupil eye level. Expressions and gestures vary, but Germain prescribes no particular mood.
Germain entered classrooms during lessons and prepared a large-format camera and added lighting while teaching continued. Near the lesson's end, he adjusted positions only when one pupil obscured another. Exposures of roughly one-quarter to one-half second produced substantial depth of field and required collective stillness. The project moved from film to digital capture and later incorporated classroom films, individual video portraits, and questionnaire-based infographics about pupils' tastes and aspirations.
Arts Council England issued a 15-portrait portfolio in 2005. A British Council-supported exhibition opened at the National Museum in Sana'a in 2007 and subsequently toured. The 2012 Prestel book Classroom Portraits 2004-2012 accompanied The Future is Ours at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, followed by presentations in Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, and other cities. Towner Art Gallery surveyed the work through 2015 in an expanded installation. In 2023, the Nederlands Fotomuseum acquired 19 prints and four films. The book appeared among Popular Photography/American Photo's 2012 Books of the Year, and education research has since used the photographs to prompt reflection on school systems and cultural difference.
