Social Studies
Social Studies is the result of a long term project by James spanning over 25 years documenting New Brunswick people from all walks of life and vocations. These portraits were all taken in the studio with natural window light. Each subject is isolated in front of a neutral background revealing each subject in great detail.
James Wilson’s studio portraits capture subjects from all walks of life. They document soldiers and street people, builders and bakers, artists and labourers. There is an intimate intensity in his photographs, which together form a timeless collage of life and faces from the early twenty-first century.
The book has 80 black and white portraits of New Brunswick people with many different jobs or positions in society by photographer James Wilson and an introduction by John Leroux of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and curator of the traveling exhibition of large photographs titled Social Studies.
“The same stage, but different actors,” explains Wilson. “There is something interesting to me about separating people from their environment, about keeping the focus on the individual.”