Paul Graham

Paul Graham is a British photographer living and working in New York. His 1981 series A1: The Great North Road, colour photographs made along Britain's longest numbered road, had a revolutionising effect on a genre then dominated by black-and-white social documentary. A new school soon emerged, with artists like Martin Parr, Richard Billingham, and Nick Waplington following his lead into colour. Graham's philosophy embraces photography's fundamental paradox: "Photography is so easy it's ridiculous. It's just looking at things. We all do that. It's so difficult because it's everywhere, every place, all the time, even right now." He is sceptical of photography's mythologies: "The 'decisive moment' is bullshit. There are ten pictures before and ten pictures after every one of them." His American trilogy, American Night, a shimmer of possibility, and The Present, addresses race, inequality, and the texture of everyday life while interrogating the nature of sight itself. "The unique qualities of photography are its struggle to deal with time and life," Graham reflects. "Sometimes I think those are our materials. Not film, not paper, not prints: time and life." He remains critical of superficial approaches: "Far too many photographers think that if they take a picture of something interesting, they will automatically have an interesting photograph. But it doesn't work like that." Graham received the Hasselblad Award in 2012, and a shimmer of possibility won the Paris Photo prize for most important photography book of the past fifteen years