PORTLANDERS2011 - 2021
In December 2008, Gervin suffered a traumatic head injury after being assaulted, an event that would dramatically alter the course of his life. Barely able to afford rent after having recently been laid off from work in the fallout of the recession, he swiftly spiraled into poverty and addiction – a situation exacerbated by his injury, the second head trauma he’d experienced in his lifetime. Diagnosed with Post-Concussion Syndrome, Gervin developed severe sensitivity to light and sound and experienced debilitating migraines which left him feeling like a “prisoner in [his] own body”. At first, favoring the dark, quiet nights over the chaos of daytime, it was during these periods of solitude and broken sleep that Gervin rediscovered photography, roaming the streets after dark with his camera and finding a renewed sense of purpose in the process.
What followed was a ten year pursuit of photographing the many layers of his home city which saw him capturing everything from protest marches, wrestling bouts to drunken night-time brawls and even venturing down into the long forgotten subterranean networks of tunnels beneath the streets. As Gervin explains,
“I was driven by my anxieties,
trying to stay sober while I attempted to make sense of my life and the transitioning world around me. I was making a visual record of a place in time. A portrait of a city that I’ve grown a deep attachment to. I believe, to truly love the city where you live, is to embrace it for all its faults and beauty. As time went on and I felt compelled to continue the work, I realized it was not just myself, but also the city and it’s Portlanders that were also at a crossroads.”
Where I wandered
when I remembered to turn on my tracker
Special Editions come signed
and with a 5x7 limited edition print.
Foto Podcast 018 - Nick Gervin
Capturing the Grit & Soul of a City
Michael Howard and Nick Gervin
Feb 26, 2025
In this episode, we sit down with Nick Gervin, a documentary photographer from Portland, Maine, whose raw and unfiltered work captures the unseen side of city life. Nick shares his journey from overcoming two traumatic brain injuries to using photography as a tool for recovery and self-expression. We dive deep into his decade-long project, Portlanders, his thoughts on documentary photography, the role of flash in his work, and how skateboarding shaped his visual style. Plus, we talk about his latest project, Mainers, where he’s expanding his lens beyond the city to capture the essence of his home state.
If you love honest, compelling storytelling through photography, this episode is for you.
“Nick Gervin is one of Maine’s most captivating and idiosyncratic photographers.”
“There is a sense of subjective concern on the part of the photographer, and it does indeed remind me of Robert Frank in several places. It feels atmospheric and conditional and purports nothing too declarative but instead dwells in the aggregate, the sum of its singular parts actively resisting outright pessimism, but noting that cynicism, however slight, has chipped away at the dream of the Americans within. I praise the book for its tenacity and feeling of urban photographic exploration and for not shying away from the warts of it all.”
“There’s a moment in Bill Buford’s classic book about soccer hooligans, “Among the Thugs,” when the beer-soaked and rowdy crowd starts whispering and then chanting, “It’s going off. It’s going off,” meaning that the crowd is about to explode in some sort of yet-to-be-determined violent outburst. That’s the feeling I get from Nick’s book: a lit fuse. Some pictures put us closer to the box of dynamite than others, but all of them hold that tension.”
-Bill Shapiro
The Making of Portlanders
Published by: Photo Editions Ltd. Nov.2023
Designer: Tom Booth Woodger
Printer: MAS Matbaa
Printing: Tri-tone + Varnish
Binding: Flush Cut Hardback + reverse french fold dust jacket
Size: 9.45x11.22”
Pages: 88
Images: 53
Paper: Gardapat 13 Kiara 135gsm
Font: ABC Diatype Mono
