Looking at My Brother: Julian Slagman

Looking at My Brother: Julian Slagman by Michael HoneggerOctober 29, 2024

With touching and intimate glimpses into the maturation of three brothers by one of their own, Julian Slagman’s Looking at my Brother, presents a unique family album with a specific set of players. Using a variety of cameras and styles, Slagman uses photography as a means to create bonds in a blended family (the three brothers share a mother, but Slagman has a different father) and record the specific burdens of his two stepbrothers, Mats and Jonah.

Mats, in particular, bears the burden of having to deal with scoliosis and subsequent surgeries that scar his body. Slagman sensitively frames the challenges that Mats faces. His images of his brother’s residual scars over the ten years covered by the project are markers of the healing progress made as time passes. For time is another critical element in Slagman’s world as the images progress in an intentionally random sequence defying chronology. There are interesting spreads where two portraits of the same brother shot moments apart depict time in an instant. Other images jump from infancy to adolescence and back again in rapid succession. This playful transit of time is effective in highlighting the bonds that Slagman seems to build with each of his brothers individually.

There is a triangular relationship among the brothers, and it is clearly defined in the title of the book which indicates the connection between each brother is unique territory. Slagman’s camera gazes at each brother in a tender but individual manner. One can almost feel the brother being photographed looking intently at the brother holding the camera. Jonah, the youngest brother, has his starring turn as well with his pouting lips and soulful stares. At times it is difficult to distinguish which brother is photographed as the family resemblances are dramatic.

According to Slagman, “Within the last ten years, a child became a teenager, and a teenager became an adult. Skin became a photograph and light somehow evolved into a face. When I press the shutter, the viewfinder blacks out in the moment I am taking the picture. The photographic image cuts itself through time on every level…I have been photographing my brothers for the last ten years, watching them grow up and seeing myself growing up with them. Like an arrow that never reaches its target, carefully bending around its moment, like flesh that becomes light and wounds made out of time.”

Julian Slagman is a German-Dutch photographer currently living and working in Stockholm. He has exhibited series of works in Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Paris Photo and around Europe. Looking at my Brother was awarded the Aenne Biermann Prize in 2021 and shortlisted for the Carte Blanche Students Prize sponsored by Paris Photo.