Intimate compositions reveal moments that are by turns pensive and playful, wild and serene. We see the brothers hug, wrestle, swim, run and explore. They pose for revealing close-ups and unknowingly fill the frame for candid shots

It’s a beautiful book where each boy takes on a different role as they career through the ages

Looking at My Brother is the first monograph by German-Dutch photographer Julian Slagman. In this book, Slagman presents work made over the past ten years, photographing his two younger brothers, Mats and Jonah, growing up navigating adolescence and brotherhood.

From individual portraits to shared moments, the images offer a poignant exploration of childhood, growth, and the passage of time. Intimate compositions reveal moments that are by turns pensive and playful, wild and serene. The work deals with the vulnerability of the body and the brutality of the scars that Mats suffered after his scoliosis surgery. These physical reminders juxtapose with the resilience and strength embodied by both brothers. Through the book, Slagman delves into the vulnerable relationship between photography and time, inviting us to witness the tender moments of connection, and a chronicle of brotherhood.

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. Its surgery. Like a doctor sealing a wound, with careful stitches. Like me, sealing light onto film. 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.

was awarded the Aenne Biermann Prize in 2021 and shortlisted for the Carte Blanche Students Prize sponsored by Paris Photo.