Paul Graham: FotoFocus Lecturer

“It’s classic street photography: to go out and walk with life, flowing in at the people, changing, coming, going. What is interesting is how these moments arrive to somebody and a second later they are replaced with something else. The street turns into a stage, with a main player and a minor player, but suddenly the minor player becomes the main player.”—Paul Graham, speaking about The Present, at Fundación Telefónica in Madrid, February 2014 (From “It’s Photography, It’s Life,” by Ignacio Evangelista for turnonart.com.)

Though widely shown at group and solo exhibitions aroundthe world, Paul Graham might best be known for his trilogy of photobook editions on America—The Present (Mack, 2012), of busy urban life on New York City well-trafficked thoroughfares; a shimmer of possibility (Steidl Mack, 2007), of everyday life in 12 short “stories”; and American Night (Steidl Mack. 2003), of juxtaposed images of incongruity, overexposed or color saturated depictions of urban and suburban neighborhoods. In The Present we see best the correlation with Eyes on the Street: street activity is captured repeatedly and in an instant. Inconsequential moments are made monumental, as if presented on the stage.

Paul Graham (b. 1956) is a self-taught British photographer who, in 1998, moved to the United States, where the bright sunlight made an impression on him. It was his use of color film in the early 1980s—when British photography was dominated by traditional black-and-white social documentary—that revolutionized the genre and spawned a new school of photography with artists like Martin Parr, Richard Billingham, Simon Norfolk and Nick Waplington. Over the last 30 years, Mr. Graham has produced 12 distinct bodies of work. He has been the subject of more than eighty solo exhibitions worldwide. In 2012, he received the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, regarded as photography’s top honor. According to the publisher, his new book series, Does Yellow Run Forever? (Mack, Sept. 2014), “pushes deeper into an ongoing exploration of the ephemeral and quotidian in the fabric of our lives.”—The Present (Mack, 2012), of busy urban life on New York City well-trafficked thoroughfares; a shimmer of possibility (Steidl Mack, 2007), of everyday life in 12 short “stories”; and American Night (Steidl Mack. 2003), of juxtaposed images of incongruity, overexposed or color saturated depictions of urban and suburban neighborhoods. In The Present we see best the correlation with Eyes on the Street: street activity is captured repeatedly and in an instant. Inconsequential moments are made monumental, as if presented on the stage.

Image from The Present: Paul Graham, 34t h  St r e e t , 4 t h June 2 0 10, 3 . 1 2 . 5 8 pm, 2010. Two pigment prints each mounted to Dibond. Each image, paper and mount, 56 × 74 in. Courtesy Pace/MacGill, New York. © Paul Graham