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Presented as part of the Photography Lecture Series
from the series "A1—The Great North Road," (1981–2)
Timken Lecture Hall, San Francisco campus
Free and open to the public
Paul Graham (1956–), of the United Kingdom, belongs to a group of photographers born in the 1950s who forms the last generation to engage with photographic practice before it became part of the contemporary art world.
While later imagemakers would approach the medium as "artists using photography," this grouping—which includes Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Rineke Djikstra, Thomas Struth, and Philip-Lorca DiCorcia—committed itself to the medium at a time when it was not an artistic strategy, but an expression of a visual consciousness of our world.
Graham was among the first photographers to unite contemporary color practice with the classic genre of "social documentary." In 1981–2 he completed A1—The Great North Road, a series of color photographs from along the length of the British A1 road, which had a transformative effect on the black-and-white tradition that had dominated British art photography to that point.
This work, along with his other photographs of the 1980s—the color images of unemployment offices in Beyond Caring (1984–5), and the sectarian-marked landscape of Northern Ireland in Troubled Land (1984–6)—were pivotal in reinvigorating and expanding this area of photographic practice, by both broadening its visual language and questioning how such photography might operate.
Photographers such as Martin Parr made the switch to color soon after, and a new school of British photography evolved with the subsequent color work of Richard Billingham, Tom Wood, Paul Seawright, Anna Fox, Simon Norfolk, Nick Waplington, et al.
Since then Graham has continued to explore the fertile territory where the documentary and artistic aspects of photography coalesce, often tackling difficult subject matter for a medium that is firmly based in the observable world.
New Europe (1988–1993) used a poetic flow of images to look at the tension between the shadow of history and the rush to an economic superstate in Western Europe. Empty Heaven (1989–1995) considers the relationship between historical trauma and the childish fantasy world in Japan—themes that would later become central to the "Superflat" movement of contemporary Japanese art.
More recently Graham's work has reflected an examination of what we expect from a photographic image, be it a portrait—as in the hard-soft images of young people in End of an Age (1996–98); or questioning what actually registers in our consciousness, with American Night (1998–2003), which reflected the social fracture of American society through overexposed, near invisible white images.
Most recently Graham completed a shimmer of possibility (2004–6) that embraces overlooked moments of life in today's United States, while also examining photography's ability to compress or expand time through flowing sequences of images.
At a time when art photography is increasingly staged (Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, Thomas Demand), or holds the world at a conceptualized distant view (Andreas Gursky, Berndt and Hilla Becher, Thomas Struth), Graham's work distinguishes itself by retaining a firm and full commitment to life as it unfolds—to an understanding that at its core photography begins with an unblinking engagement with the world.
Embracing this crucial axiom of photography, Graham's work affirms this central area of photographic practice by expanding its visual language, and questioning what such photography could say, be, or look like.
This lecture series is presented in part by Pier 24 Photography
