Friday 27 June 2008

Paul Graham


Images from the series "American Night" by Paul Graham


Paul Graham http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/ is only the third photographer to make it into my Gods section, and here's why.
He more than any British photographer (I'm aware of at least) is moving the art form on, leaving well and truly behind that thing that keeps dragging it back to it's early days, "The great single shot". The whole wow! single picture, decisive moment, craft skill, romantic baggage that even now in this brave new world, too many people, both critics and photographers alike are clinging onto, sadly especially here in the UK. Take his series above, a quiet series, each picture is no more than a word, a whisper even, but together it adds upto an uneasy sentence. His latest work "A shimmer of possibility" has not yet been uploaded to his website, but the book or at least a collection of twelve individual books has been published and can be seen here, if not bought as it's already sold out: http://www.steidlville.com/books/600-a-shimmer-of-possibility.html An early clue to the importance of this work?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Mark
As this is the only way I can contact you, I thought you may want to read this about Richard Prince on the 'A Photo Editor' blog: http://aphotoeditor.com/

quote: 'Whether you think it’s art is irrelevant. Nancy Spector, Chief Curator at the Guggenheim decided that “Prince’s work has been among the most innovative art produced in the United States during the past 30 years.'

All the best
Tom RS

mark page said...

Cheers Tom, you can contact me at markedpage2005@yahoo.co.uk or info@manchesterphotography.com.....

mark page said...

Tom,
I'll have to take a look later as he seems to be having server issues.

mark page said...

Thanks for that Tom it made for intersting reading. I thought some of the comments left, showed the huge spectrum of photography depending which camp the commentor came from.
Editorial photographers concerned with having bread taken out of their mouths, the arty types intersted in concepts of authorship/context etc.
I imagine that over the years though that artists have been victims far more often than this way round....... The answer for me, tag your image only upload low res and sit back and watch "your babies" take on a life of their own so to speak and be proud.........