Blain does not call himself a portrait photographer. The Icon Series was never about portraiture - it was about what a photograph can do for people who have lost everything.
Conceived, produced and photographed over twelve months to mark Australia's Centenary of Federation, the series is 26 one-of-one portraits of 22 Australian icons - Cathy Freeman fresh from her Olympic gold, Governor-General Sir William Deane, Malcolm Fraser, Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter, Peter Garrett, Glenn Murcutt, Sir Gustav Nossal, and General Eva Burrows, world head of the Salvation Army. Each was printed once, at one metre square, on a Lambda machine by Bond Colour, and signed by both sitter and photographer.
Encouraged by John Dalziel, then the Salvation Army's marketing director, Blain developed the project pro bono, approached every sitter himself and raised over $80,000 in support and sponsorship. The exhibition and auction at 101 Collins Street - conducted by Andrew Stuart of Hocking Stuart, with one of the first online bidding platforms used for an Australian art fundraiser - opened alongside the 2001 Red Shield Appeal, with proceeds directed to a housing project for disadvantaged people in St Kilda. It drew radio, print and television coverage nationally.
The reasoning behind it was a personal observation of his: it takes only a few steps for a life to end up on the street - illness, trauma, neglect, upheaval. The series put the country's most recognised faces to work for its least seen.
Over thirty organisations and individuals backed the series in cash and in kind. Among them: Macquarie Bank and the Macquarie Foundation, 101 Collins Street, Qantas, Kodak Australia, Bond Colour Printing, Lab X, ACME B&W Printing, Custom Colour Lab, Scott Digital Services, Lemac Films Australia, The Camera Exchange (Hasselblad lenses), Eckersleys Framing, PinPoint Design, Expo-Hire, Budget Car Rentals, Medina Serviced Apartments, Air Express and Jupiter Air Couriers, Efbee Hair, Corporate Manoeuvres Public Relations, The Stump Hotel in Port Fairy, marketing consultant Murray Foster, and Geoff Slattery and Rick Davis's DOMO in South Yarra, which served as the studio.
Assistants: Dianna Spriggs, Jason Chen and Becky Haisma. Event enablers: John Fitzgerald, David Mattingly, Sarah Baston and Tania Ewing. Auction: Andrew Stuart, Hocking Stuart. Web design: dNA Studio (Jason Chen).