The work of Paul Graham emerged in the mid 80s when I was at college and along with the work of Martin Parr heavily influenced a new approach to photography. Rejecting a serious black and white photographic tradition they tore a fresh colour perspective into a narrow and staid photographic world. They were revolutionaries in a new colour documentary vision which created an alternative to an artform still stuck in the 60s and 70s.
The Whitechapel Gallery show is startling for a number of reasons. Firstly looking at Grahams early work from A1-The Great North Road , Beyond Caring and Troubled Land one realises how unrevolutionary the work looks now. That is because as an artform photography has evolved hugely in the last 25 years and it is due to photographers such as Paul Graham. Secondly as one of the most important British photographers of his generation this show emphasises how overlooked his work has been in this country.
Documentary photography was a label fitting for Grahams 80s subject matter. Beyond Caring feels like a social commentary on Thatchers Britain but amongst the broken figures in the DHSS offices it is the backdrop of posters and the worn walls that says even more about the boredom and the lost hope. On the A1 series we are swamped by the ordinariness of life on the road. The camera retreats to the service station or the café to examine how time stands still .
In Bus Converted to Café, 1982 the road is reduced to a background drone so we can only imagine the cars passing beyond the misted up windows. Time has stood still inside but beyond there is something going on.
In fact what Graham ignores is as important as what lies inside the frame. At Interior Rainton Servives 1981 the interior fixtures become even more important than the people. A breeze catches the curtain to the kitchen and suggests movement and life beyond.
This an approach Graham returns to in Troubled Land. In Roundabout, Andersontown, Belfast 1984 the street furniture is littered with impact, broken kerb stones, a missing streetlight and an army patrol leaving the frame. It is the scars in the cityscape that provide the understanding, not the men in uniform. The approach may be understated but the intention is not. If Robert Capa urged photographers to get closer to their subject matter Graham drastically reverses the notion.
Indeed in Paint on Road, Derry 1985 the only clues to a troubled land lie in the road. Small smears and patches of coloured paint. Suddenly everything else develops more meaning – a bundle of dumped rags at the side of the frame and a school mid distance. Executions, dumped bodies, violence and divided communities emerge from the fabric of the landscape. It is ominous, threatening and as powerful an image as that of a petrol bomb being thrown in anger. A sign at the side of the road reads Welcome to Derry.
Figures are more prominent in his series End of an Age 1996-97. Portraits of partygoers isolated against walls and in corridors are suspended in a no mans land. Between rooms of booming music and throngs of people they seem still and calm but unsure of their next move - caught between time past and time ahead. Again what is out of the frame or merely hinted at is as vital to the narrative as what has been included.
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| Photograph by Paul Graham |
In Bus Converted to Café, 1982 the road is reduced to a background drone so we can only imagine the cars passing beyond the misted up windows. Time has stood still inside but beyond there is something going on.
In fact what Graham ignores is as important as what lies inside the frame. At Interior Rainton Servives 1981 the interior fixtures become even more important than the people. A breeze catches the curtain to the kitchen and suggests movement and life beyond.
This an approach Graham returns to in Troubled Land. In Roundabout, Andersontown, Belfast 1984 the street furniture is littered with impact, broken kerb stones, a missing streetlight and an army patrol leaving the frame. It is the scars in the cityscape that provide the understanding, not the men in uniform. The approach may be understated but the intention is not. If Robert Capa urged photographers to get closer to their subject matter Graham drastically reverses the notion.
 |
| Photograph by Paul Graham |
Indeed in Paint on Road, Derry 1985 the only clues to a troubled land lie in the road. Small smears and patches of coloured paint. Suddenly everything else develops more meaning – a bundle of dumped rags at the side of the frame and a school mid distance. Executions, dumped bodies, violence and divided communities emerge from the fabric of the landscape. It is ominous, threatening and as powerful an image as that of a petrol bomb being thrown in anger. A sign at the side of the road reads Welcome to Derry.
Figures are more prominent in his series End of an Age 1996-97. Portraits of partygoers isolated against walls and in corridors are suspended in a no mans land. Between rooms of booming music and throngs of people they seem still and calm but unsure of their next move - caught between time past and time ahead. Again what is out of the frame or merely hinted at is as vital to the narrative as what has been included.
 |
| Photograph by Paul Graham |
Although Grahams early work was documentary-driven his approach was evolving even further away from the label he was first given. The Whitechapel show effectively announces Graham as an artist rather than a documentary photographer. The range of his projects shows a restlessness and constant dialogue with the constraints of the photographic medium. “It has steadily become less important to me that the photographs are about something in the most obvious way. I am interested in more nebulous and more elusive subject matter. The photography I most respect pulls something out of the ether of nothingness." (Sean Ohagan article, Observer)
His latest work in America (where he moved to in 2002) stares straight into that nothingness. His American Night bleached out landscapes were inspired by the southern sunlight hitting him as he emerged from the movie theater and give little away. The clues that littered his early work have been reduced to ghostly smudges and shapes. They are challenging images and even prompted some sellers to return copies of their print runs convinced they were botched. They contrast with the pin sharp photographs of suburban housing - one set of images is literally almost invisible to the other. The underlying social and political themes continue to eloquently underlie his work.
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| Photograph by Paul Graham |
If the everyday and ordinariness of life have always had a grip on Graham it is the otherness of photography that he continually returns to. A Shimmer of Possibility is a series of short visual stories based around common scenes. Texas 2005 (Pepsi Walkers) follows a couple walking with their shopping in a strip cartoon style storyboard. It defies the concept of Cartier Bressons “decisive moment” and questions what a moment is and how we could ever pretend to capture it. Indeed what makes one moment more important than another? In some ways Graham has decided to stop trying to find answers in his photographs but to instead layer them with deeper questions.
When I look back on Grahams early work I remember how dull and ordinary it seemed at the time. My reaction was based on my preconceptions of photography as a viewer. I expected good photographs to come to me, to wow me , to move me and to at least make an effort. Graham throughout his career has taught people how to look at photographs, in a different way, to search for clues and to ask difficult questions of photography and the way we look at and understrand the world around us. This is a photographer who deserves proper recognition in this country and in our history of photography.
Paul Graham: Photographs 1981-2006 until 19th June at the Whitechapel Gallery.
P.S. Just to mention coming straight after the John Stezaker exhibition it is refreshing to see a major gallery such as the Whitechapel curating two photography shows one after another.
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