Portlanders - Nick Gervin

“The deeper I dug, the more the city shared its secrets with me.”

In his debut monograph, Nick Gervin presents a surreal look into the flip-side of American culture, all captured on the stage of the small city of Portland, Maine.

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 spiralled 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”. Favouring the dark, quiet nights over the chaos of daytime, it was during these periods of solitude and broken sleep that Gervin rediscovered photography, nocturnally roaming the streets with his camera and finding a renewed sense of purpose in the process.