Photographer Julian Slagman photographed his brothers for ten years

Children celebrate and respect their age. Birthdays are the end of childhood drawn out and growing up seems endless. The photographer Julian Slagman (° 1993) was already a teenager when he had two brothers: Mats (° 2004) and Jonah (° 2008). He watched them grow up, sometimes up close and sometimes from the sidelines – but always with love. Sslagman photographed his brothers for ten years. Looking at them was a way of accepting them. He watched time pass and noticed the traces on their bodies: an undamaged body growing towards the future, and a weak body with scars as a reminder of the many works he had done to make the curvature of the to correct his spine.

When Mats faced scoliosis as a young man, he and Julian made it their goal to represent his body as beautifully as possible. They were looking for an antithesis to the ideals of beauty that prevailed among teenagers. “It makes sense to take pictures. This makes me feel seen and appreciated,” Mats said at the time. It helped to leave the heavy burden of scoliosis behind, to process everything and gain confidence from it.

Capturing and manipulating life’s turning points, that is also what photography is all about. Cheers to those in front of and behind the lens. “When I print,” says Slagman, “the detector turns black. The camera cuts through time. Like a surgeon sewing up a wound with careful sutures, I keep a light on film.”

The book Looking at my brother published by Diskobay.