Mcqueen Tate project ‘based on other artist’s 14-year-old idea’

STEVE MCQUEEN’S ambitious project to photograph every Year 3 pupil in London is based on the idea of another photographer who started working in schools 14 years ago, a former British Council director has claimed.

Andrea Rose has questioned the originality of the Academy Award-winning film director’s venture, in which he hopes to create an installation at Tate Britain using the faces of thousands of seven-year-old pupils.

Ms Rose, the British Council’s head of visual arts for 20 years until 2014, said she thought that the idea was based on another project by Julian Germain. The Tate dismissed that notion and insisted that Mr Mcqueen is making a “very different” piece of work.

Mr Germain, who is based in Northumberland, said he started photographing children in their classrooms as part of a project called “The Future Is Ours”, which he launched in 2004.

Ms Rose said: “When I read the Tate’s announcement it just seemed so obvious that it was very like Julian’s work in the area. This is quite a specific project. I don’t want to take anything away from Steve, but I do think Julian was the first to come up with this idea.”

Mr Germain, 56, told The Daily Telegraph that he finds the situation “uncomfortable”.

He said: “I first became aware of Steve’s project when I started getting emails saying “what the hell is this? And people getting angry on my behalf. It’s not copyright infringement, it’s more that the conversations around it are pretty much identical. I don’t think Steve Mcqueen is familiar with my work, but a lot of people connected this project to my work.

“I suppose my classroom project came first, so it is slightly uncomfortable for me. My project didn’t make it to London and didn’t really get noticed at a wider level, so now this Mcqueen project is being treated as a new concept when it’s not. Some of the essential ideas are the same.”

Mr Germain said his school portraits are very specific and shot using slow shutter speeds. He said: “It’s not easy photographing them in the way that I do. It’s more like Victorian photography.”

In September, it was announced that Mr Mcqueen would coordinate a landmark project to photograph every seven-year-old in London for a Tate Britain installation. The gallery hoped it would help a whole new generation feel part of the art world. The project could include up to 115,000 children across London’s 2,410 primary schools.

At the launch, Mr Mcqueen said: “There’s an urgency to reflect on who we are and our future.”

A joint statement from the Tate and Artangel, the charitable organisation working on Mr Mcqueen’s project, said: “Julian Germain made a very intriguing project. Steve Mcqueen is making a very different one now. Both projects involve portraits of children or students in classrooms, but that’s as far as the comparison goes.

“The children in Mcqueen’s project are all at primary schools in a particular city, London; they are all a particular age and in a particular class, Year 3; and they are all being photographed in a particular way.”

Mr Mcqueen could not be reached for comment.

‘My project didn’t make it to London, so now this Mcqueen project is being treated as a new concept when it’s not’