James Wilson: Social Studies

There's something strange, interesting, unsettling yet wonderfully compelling about these portraits, which reveal perhaps more than they should.

"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."

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.

Wilson’s portraits are also the product of a purposeful gaze, distinctive observations in black-and-white. All window-lit, all photographed in his studio, all with the same black background, these photographic portraits open a door into the worlds and at times the unguarded emotions of the individual subjects.

James Wilson: Social Studies accompanies an exhibition that will open at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, NB, in June 2020.