A unified approach to the pseudoscalar meson (, , and K) photoproductions off nucleons are presented.It begins with the low energy QCD Lagrangian, and the resonances in the s and u channels are treated in the framework of the quark model. The duality hypothesis is imposed to limit the number of the t-channel exchanges. The CGLN amplitudes for each reaction are evaluated, which include both proton and neutron targets. The important role of the S-wave resonances in the second resonance region is discussed, and is particularly important for the K, , and Ј photoproductions. ͓S0556-2813͑97͒01908-0͔ PACS number͑s͒: 13.75.Gx, 13.40.Hq, 13.60.Le, 12.39.Ba ␣ NN in the production or ␣ KN⌳ and ␣ KN⌺ for kaon productions.The paper is organized as follows. In Sec. II, the theoretical framework is established in meson photoproductions starting from the low energy QCD Lagrangian. The formalism in the chiral quark model is presented for the s-and u-channel resonances in Sec. III. We shall show how the CGLN amplitudes for the s-and u-channel resonances are derived in the quark model. Although our approach starts with the low energy QCD Lagrangian, it could also be ex-