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.
Produced and photographed over twelve months to mark Australia's centenary of Federation, the series is 26 one-of-one portraits of Australian icons - Cathy Freeman fresh from her Olympic gold, Governor-General Sir William Deane, film director Bruce Beresford, medical researcher Sir Gustav Nossal, and General Eva Burrows, world head of the Salvation Army - each printed once, at one metre square.
Working pro bono with the Salvation Army's communications director John Dalziel, Blain approached every icon himself and raised over $80,000 in sponsorship. The exhibition and auction at 101 Collins Street - run on one of Australia's first online bidding platforms - supported the 2001 Red Shield Appeal, with proceeds funding housing for disadvantaged people in St Kilda.
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.
