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Julian Slagman is a photographer currently working between Malmö (SE) and Hamburg (DE). 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.
ISBN 978-91-531-3512-8
  • a failed attempt to photograph reality
through board binding
16 × 23,5 cm
36 pages
Riso/Inkjet
Epilogue by Avi Bolotinsky
Limited Edition of 30 copies
Published 11th of April 2025    
Design: Julian Slagman
          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

            Jonah looking at Mats holding an airplane,
          • Prague, 2012
          Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta,
          mounted, signed & dated
          Maple Frame, Artglass AR 70 Antireflex
          Frame Size 300x400mm
          Image Size 200x300mm

            Stills, Book Launch at NW Gallery
          • Copenhagen, 2024


          Jonah looking at me, wearing a silver suit
          Hamburg, 2016

          • Granta Magazine 161
          • Sister & Brother
          • Text by Alice Hattrick

          • 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

                  • 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

                  The Child of a Moment ago Enters Without a Word
                  Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg, 2023
                  Slide projection (2011-2022), anodised aluminium plates, welded metal construction, Inkjet prints