Portraits of Students in Classrooms Around the World by Photographer Julian Germain

The Future is Ours, Classroom Portraits, 2004 - 2012

What happens when a stranger enters a classroom during a lesson and asks for the pupils' total concentration for 15 minutes in order to make their portrait? He positions everyone with great care (so that they can clearly be seen) and then demands that they stay completely still for the long exposure. The results are both predictable and astonishing.

This ongoing series by Julian Germain started in northeast England. Since then Germain has visited schools throughout North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. His magnificent photographs are packed with detail--books open on graffitied desks, instructions on white and blackboards, artwork hanging on walls, notes scribbled on the backs of hands. And of course there are the faces of the children themselves; enrapt, bored, inquisitive, arrogant, or shy, they incite endless curiosity about what these kids' lives are like and what their futures hold.

These portraits trigger memories of our own schooldays and bring into sharp focus the contemporary school experience throughout the world, in all its diversity and universality.

Bangladesh, Jessore. Year 10, English

England, Seaham, Reception and Year 1, Structured Play
Taiwan, Ruei Fang Township, Kindergarten, Art

"I never tell the students how they should look but ensuring that everybody has a clear view of the camera requires concentration and patience. Each pupil has to be aware of their place in the picture.

In order to achieve sharp focus in both fore- and background, the exposure time is usually a quarter or half a second so the pupils have to be ready for the moment the shutter is released. I am waiting for them and they are waiting for me. The process itself generates an atmosphere and the time captured in the portrait seems significant." ~ Julian Germain

Saudi Arabia, Dammam, Kindergarden, ActivitiesWales, Felindre, Reception and Years 1 & 2, Numeracy
England, Keighley, Year 6, History
England, Bradford, Year 7, Art

Kuramo Junior College, Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria. Basic 7 / Junior Secondary Level 1, Mathematics.

Holland, Drouwenermond, Primary Year 5, 6, 7 & 8, History
Peru, Cusco, Primary Grade 4, Mathematics
USA, Oklahoma, Avant, Grade 4 & 5 Social Sciences

Osvaldo Herrera Junior High School Gonzales, San Fernando de Camarones, Palmyra Township, Cuba., 2011
Argentina, Buenos Aires, Grade 4, Natural Science
Tokyo, Japan, Grade 5, Classical Japanese
Peru, Tiracanchi, Secondary Grade 2, Mathematics
Yemen, Manakha, Primary Year 2, Science Revision
Yemen, Sanaa, Secondary Year 2, English
Brazil, Belo Horizonte, Series 6, Mathematics
Qatar, Grade 10, Religion
Nigeria, Kano, Ooron Dutse, Senior Islamic Secondary Level 2, Social Studies
England, Wolsingham, Year 12, English
The Netherlands, Rotterdam, Secondary Group 3, Motor Mechanics

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Check out this behind the scenes footage here and here

Photographer Profile ~ Spencer Tunick

Spencer Tunick (1967) is an American artist. He is best known for his installations that feature large numbers of nude people posed in artistic formations. These installations are often situated in urban locations throughout the world, although he has also done some "Beyond The City" woodland and beach installations and still does individuals and small groups occasionally. Tunick is the subject of three HBO documentaries, Naked States, Naked World, and Positively Naked. His models are unpaid volunteers who receive a limited edition photo as compensation.            



Tunick was born in the United States in Middletown, Orange County, New York into a Jewish family.
In 1986, he visited London, where he took photographs of a nude at a bus stop and of scores of nudes in Alleyn's School's Lower School Hall in Dulwich, Southwark. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Emerson College in 1988.
In 1992, Tunick began documenting live nudes in public locations in New York through video and photographs. His early works from this period focus more on a single nude individual or on small groups of nudes. These works are much more intimate images than the massive installations for which he is now known. By 1994 Tunick had organized and photographed over 65 temporary site related installations in the United States and abroad. Since then, he has taken his celebration of the nude form internationally, and has taken photos in cities that include Byron Bay, Cork, Dublin, Bruges, Buenos Aires, Buffalo, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Melbourne, Montreal, Rome, San Sebastián, São Paulo, Caracas, Newcastle/Gateshead, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Helsinki, Santiago, Mexico City, Sydney and Amsterdam.

'A body is a living entity. It represents life, freedom, sensuality, and it is a mechanism to carry out our thoughts. A body is always beautiful to me. It depends on the individual work and what I do with it and what kind of idea lies behind it — if age matters or not. But in my group works, the only difference is how far people can go if it rains, snows etc.'
  ~ Spencer Tunick

Spencer Tunick's RING - Munich Opera Festival 2012 from Bureau Mirko Borsche on Vimeo.



Spencer Tunick - Vienna Installation - SD from Soy Bueno on Vimeo.

Master's of the Group Shot ~ Arthur S. Mole and John D. Thomas

So you thought just North Koreans are great at massive group formations. During World War I, photographers Arthur S. Mole and John D. Thomas traveled from one military camp to another taking photos of soldiers forming patriotic symbols as a part of planned promotional campaign to sell war bonds.

Thousands soldiers would form gigantic patriotic symbols such as Statue of Liberty, president Woodrow Wilson, American Eagle or Liberty Bell which were photographed from above.
Mole and Thomas spent days preparing formations which were photographed from a 70 to 80 foot tower with an 11x14 inch glass plate camera. Mole called them “living photographs.”

Photos by Mole and Thomas are now part of the Chicago Historical Society, the Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress.

Human U.S. Shield
30,000 officers and men, Camp Custer, Battle Creek, Mich.


* Note the forced perspective. There are many more soldiers in the back of the image than the front.  Genius!

Human American Eagle
12,500 officers, nurses and men; Camp Gordon, Atlanta

 Human Liberty Bell
25,000 officers and men at Camp Dix, New Jersey

Human Statue of Liberty
18,000 officers and men at Camp Dodge, Des Moines, Ia

On a stifling July day in 1918, 18,000 officers and soldiers posed as Lady Liberty on the parade [drill] grounds at Camp Dodge." "According to a July 3, 1986, story in the Fort Dodge Messenger, many men fainted—they were dressed in woolen uniforms—as the temperature neared 105 degrees Fahrenheit [41 degrees Celsius]. The photo, taken from the top of a specially constructed tower by a Chicago photography studio, Mole & Thomas, was intended to help promote the sale of war bonds but was never used." Wow... well I don't feel so bad about the campaign I shot last summer that was never used. 

"The design for the living picture was laid out at the drill ground at Camp Dodge, situated in the beautiful valley of the Des Moines River. Thousands of yards of white tape were fastened to the ground and formed the outlines on which 18,000 officers and men marched to their respective positions." one of the men in the photograph above.

 Living Insignia of the 27th Division “New York’s Own”
10,000 officers and enlisted men, Breakers of the Hinderburg Line

Machine Gun Insignia
22,500 officers and men, 600 machine guns at Machine Gun Training Center, Camp Hancock, Augusta, Ga.

 Living Uncle Sam
19,000 officers and men, Camp Lee, VA.

 Living Emblem of the United States Marines
100 officers and 9,000 enlisted men, Marine Barracks, Paris Islands, S.C.

Sincerely yours, Woodrow Wilson
21,000 officers and men, Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio

The 11th Division Seal