Julian Slagman

Julian Slagman is a photographer currently working between Hamburg (DE) and Malmö (SE). His work centers on the significance of paying attention to the act of seeing. He publishes books, photographic reactions, image studies and texts on an ongoing basis and at irregular intervals.

ISSN 2944-0203

Vol. 2 Flammen

This sequence shows the process of making fire. The images were taken on the 25th of August 2024, over a period of 4 minutes, from 4:25 PM to 4:29 PM. The fire was ignited exactly during this time.

ISSN 2944-0203

Undefinierbare Erscheinungen

Vol. 1 Niederschlag
148x210mm
24 pages
Edition: 30
Softcover with staple binding
numbered
Out of Print

Vol. 2 Flammen
148x210mm
24 pages
Edition: 12
Softcover with staple binding
numbered
Out of Print

Under the title Undefinierbare Erscheinungen, I will publish photographic reactions, image studies, texts and thoughts on an ongoing basis and at irregular intervals. The publications, which are designed as a series, are created instantaneously and spontaneously. The aim is to create an emphatic visual catalog that perceives and describes everyday phenomena that tend to go unnoticed.

Unter dem Titel Undefinierbare Erscheinungen werde ich fortlaufend und in unregelmäßigen Abständen fotografische Reaktionen, Bildstudien, Texte und Gedanken in Buchform veröffentlichen. Die als Serie angelegten Publikationen entstehen unmittelbar und spontan. Ziel ist die Erarbeitung eines emphatischen visuellen Katalogs, der alltägliche Erscheinungen, die mitunter ungeachtet bleiben, empfindet und beschreibt.

ISBN 978-87-973526-9-4

Looking at My Brother

published by Disko Bay
Embossed printed hardcover
17 × 22,7 cm
120 pages
68 b&w and color images
Text by Linda Baumgartner translated by Jennifer Russell
Edition of 750
Published 10th of May 2024
Design: Louis Montes

Vergissmeinnicht

Haus der Fotografie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, 2017

Archival Pigments Prints in various formats, silver gelatine prints, glass, aluminum plates, broken focussing screens, calendars, glassbox, suitcase puzzle, spirit level, pencil drawings, drill holes, hammer, pliers, paper scraps, tape, folder, fishing line, blue children's chair, spider paper, cutter, nails, packaging, archival cardboard, glue

ISSN 2944-0203
Vol. 1 Niederschlag

The first volume, Niederschlag, shows photographs from my parents' garden, which I took on an afternoon in July during a heavy summer rain. This book is made in the duration of one rain storm, between 18:02pm-18:24pm.

Looking at My Brother
written by Res

For many of us born at the end of the 20th century, we learned something about photography from our family photo albums. Through the photographs we became a family, we saw what we aspired to, what moments were worth remembering and recording, and what the passing of time looks like. The camera was taken out with the good silverware, at the big game, with the diplomas and the travelers checks, its presence wasn’t uncommon, but it wasn’t casual. We focused on what we were seeing, not necessarily aware of how we were seeing and who was doing the seeing, “Once the picture was made, the photographer disappeared, to be replaced by the viewer,” we saw a family telling itself the story of itself.

What Julian Slagman saw in his family albums was a little different in that he could see what the photographs couldn’t show. He explains, “both of my grandparents were photographers … when my grandmother accompanied my granddad on his trips through Germany, she would photograph him, focusing on him disappearing underneath the cloth.” He could see the photographer and the reverence for the act of photographing, and although Julian couldn’t always see what they were seeing, he inherited their deep dedication and love for looking and acknowledges the sharing of this role as foundational to his practice, stating “Their intimate relation, that they found through photography was perhaps what made me look at my brothers in a similar way.”

Julian was born in 1993 in Hamburg, Germany. Years later, after his mother remarried, his brother Mats was born in 2004 and the youngest Jonah in 2008. Julian was 15 years old when he began photographing and reflects, “I found myself in a great situation, of being a teenager, witnessing how a little boy is being brought up and raised in our society, while I was myself kind of still in that process too. The camera made me learn a lot about growing up.” We can see Julian coming of age behind the lens as he tries on different photographic approaches and experiments with different cameras as most teenagers do with styles of clothing or genres of music. As Julian ripens, we follow these boys blooming over the nearly 15 years of photographing, resulting in a collection of images that holds together and distills the wild, unpredictable, and often divergent processes of three evolving individuals circling each other as they move through time. Looking at my brothers, is a dedication to Mats and Jonah, as Julian asks both them and us, “to understand our vulnerability in relation to time.”

1 Peter Galassi, Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort, The Museum of Modern Art: Distributed by H.N. Abrams, 1991, p. 7

2 All quotes from a series of conversations held between Res and Julian Slagman in the spring of 2023 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

3 Konica Hexar AF, Leica M6, Leica M9, Leica S007, Sony Alpha 7r III, Fuji X100, Mamiya 7 II, Fuji GFX SII, Nikon FE2, Yashica Electro 35, Canon 5D M2, Fuji X-Pro 3, Rolleiflex 2.8F

Chicago, 2012
Exhibition Catalogue

Architecture Study
Silver Gelatine Print on expired Agfa Paper
180x240mm

Gambit
Collaborative Project with Max Schwarzmann
Arbeitsstipendium, Haus am Kleistpark, Berlin, 2017

The Bow with the Greatest Tension
Academy of Fine Arts, Hamburg, 2020

Archival pigment prints penetrated and attached to the wall by arrows, one arrow floating in space, one photogram of Mats’ corset attached to the wall by the string of a bow.