The A1 was the first major road to run the entire length of England. In the late 1950s, with the completion of the faster and more efficient motorway system, the A1 began to atrophy and decay. Graham spent two years completing this documentary on the life and landscape of what had been known as the "Great North Road." These photographs build not only into a significant documentary of the A1, but also weave a picture of England in the 1980s. This is the first of the three very influential books of Graham's work that redefined the European approach to documentary photography. Paperback. Unpaginated (96 pages); 41 full-page color photographic plates; 11 x 8.5 inches. From an edition limited to 2500 copies.

A1: The Great North Road

Arts & Photography

Paul Graham

Photography & Video

Grey Editions

Troubled Land deals with the small but insistent signs of deep political division within the landscape of Northern Ireland at the time of the "troubles." Avoiding both cliches of sensationalist urban mayhem, or escapist rural idyll, the images flow from inner city through the fringe towns and villages, and out to the countryside, concentrating in each case upon the visual footnotes of the conflict. One of the three books of Graham's work that redefined the European approach to documentary photography.  Oversized trade paperback. Photographs by Paul Graham; Essays by Declan McGonagle and Gerry Badger. 80 pages; 33 full-page color photographic plates; 12 x 9 inches.

Troubled Land: The Social Landscape of Northern Ireland

Reference

Crazy Season

Kitsune Books

Paul Graham The Present Street photography is perhaps the defining genre of photographic art. Seminal works by Walker Evans, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand display photography's astonishing dance with life, and its unique role in forming our perceptions of the modern world.The Present is Paul Graham's contribution to this legacy. The images in this book come unbidden from the streets of New York, but are not quite what we might expect, for each moment is brought to us with its double - two images taken from the same location, separated only by the briefest fraction of time. We find ourselves in sibling worlds, where a businessman with an eye patch becomes, an instant later, a man with an exaggerated wink; a woman eating a banana walks towards us, and a small focus shift reveals the blind man right behind her.Although there are flashes of surprise - a woman walks confidently down the street one moment, only to tumble to the ground a second later - for the most part there is little of the drama street photography is addicted to. People arrive and depart this quiet stage, with the smallest shift of time and attention revealing the thread between them. A suited young businessman crosses the road, only to be replaced by his homeless alternate; a woman in a pink t-shirt is engulfed with tears, but seconds later there is a content shopper in her place.The Present gives us an impression quite different to most street photography where life is frozen rigid. Here we glimpse the continuum: before/after, coming/going, either/or. A 'present' that is a fleeting and provisional alignment, with no singularity or definitiveness; a world of shifting awareness and alternate realities, where life twists and spirals in a fraction of a second to another moment, another world, another consciousness.

The Present

Mack

a shimmer of possibility

MACK BOOKS

The Whiteness of the Whale brings together Paul Graham's three bodies of American photographs: American Night, a shimmer of possibility and The Present, made from 1998 to 2011. These 3 remarkable photographic series reflect upon the social fabric of contemporary America, whilst trying to find something closer to the experience of being and seeing in the world today. American Night (2003) examines the social fracture of America - the great divide between have and have-not rendered through the dichotomy of light and darkness, presence and absence. The images oscillate between high-key near invisible photographs in bright light, and the antithesis - deeply saturated colour images of freshly minted homes glowing under California's blue skies. a shimmer of possibility (2007), is an American epic of the small and incidental. Originally published as twelve photographic visions of everyday life, the stuttering sequences form a kind of 'filmic haiku', revealing the flow of life found in quotidian America, where we share moments with people waiting for a bus, cutting the grass, or smoking a cigarette. a shimmer of possibility was winner of the 2011 Paris Photo Book Prize for the most significant Photobook of the past 15 years. The Present (2011) taken in the streets of New York, and unfolds two images of the same scene separated only by the briefest fraction of time. Here the present is revealed to be a fleeting and provisional alignment, glimpsed as part of an ever flowing continuum of life: before/after, coming/going, either/or. The luxurious catalogue is printed in wide gamut inks on natural white paper, and coincides with the first solo exhibition at Pier 24, San Francisco. It includes newly commissioned texts by David Chandler and Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa.

The Whiteness of the Whale

A1 - The Great North Road a été le premier livre de Paul Graham, publié en 1983. Bien que le Royaume-Uni ait une scène photographique dynamique à l'époque, il n'y avait qu'une poignée de livres monographiques - Chris Killip et Martin Parr en avaient un chacun - et aucun éditeur dédié ou distributeurs. Graham a dû auto- publier A1, mais en tant que premier livre couleur, il a eu un impact surprenant sur la photographie britannique. Alliant la tradition du documentaire social à la nouvelle approche de la nouvelle couleur, A1 - The Great North Road a transformé la photographie au Royaume-Uni et a ouvert la voie à l'émergence d'une nouvelle génération de photographes couleur britanniques, de Nick Waplington à Anna Fox, Richard Billingham à Tom Wood. S'étendant sur toute la longueur de la Grande-Bretagne et à Édimbourg, Graham a voyagé à plusieurs reprises le long de la «Great North Road» avec une caméra grand format, pour enregistrer les personnes, les bâtiments et le paysage de la Grande-Bretagne du début des années 1980. Aujourd'hui vieux de 40 ans, ce livre est autant un art qu’un document historique des années du gouvernement de Margaret Thatcher et de la base industrielle en déclin du Royaume-Uni. Graham a ensuite réalisé Beyond Caring (1985) et Troubled Land (1986), qui sont tous deux devenus des œuvres emblématiques. À l'origine auto-édité et maintenant rare, la trilogie de livres des années 80 de Graham sera rééditée au cours des prochaines années par MACK, se terminant par un coffret en édition limitée des 3 volumes.

A1 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD

“With ‘But Still, It Turns’, Paul Graham curates a subtle thesis and revitalising manifesto for photography. The dynamic and diverse work gathered here advocates an unashamed, but not uncomplicated, dedication to the brilliant tangle of reality. Without being tempted by the artifice of the studio or the restrictive demands of conventional documentary, these artists tell open-ended stories that shift, warp, and branch, attuned unfailingly to life-as-it-is. Included are Gregory Halpern’s Californian waking dream ‘ZZYZX’; Vanessa Winship’s peripatetic exercise in empathy ‘she dances on Jackson’; the human assemblages of Curran Hatleberg’s ‘Lost Coast’; Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa’s rich and multitudinous ‘One Wall a Web’; the mortality-tinged America of Richard Choi’s ‘What Remains’; RaMell Ross’ visionary documentary work ‘South County’; the collaborative project ‘Index G’ by Emanuele Bruti & Piergiorgio Casotti; and Kristine Potter’s disorientating exploration of the American landscape and masculinity in ‘Manifest’. All these works are brought together in harmon.

BUT STILL, IT TURNS

Originally self-published in 1985, Paul Graham’s renowned series, ‘Beyond Caring’, was made in the waiting rooms and corridors of the Social Security and Unemployment offices around the UK, documenting the long waits, queues and poor conditions of an overburdened system, to produce a powerful series of photographs conveying the hardship people experienced. Denied official permission to make the work, Graham’s photographs were taken discreetly, usually without looking through the camera, resulting in a spatial disorientation that emphasised the unmoored distress of vulnerable citizens. The work shocked many on its release – leading Magnum photographers were outraged by its use of colour in a classic documentary topic, while others celebrated how it straddled the world of activism and art (it was exhibited at both Trade Union conferences and the Museum of Modern Art, New York). Graham forged a fresh form of engaged photography, mixing elements of social documentary, ‘new colour’ and reportage to create a striking body of work that endures to this day. Many decades have passed since their making in 1984, but these images have grown not only in photographic importance, but also as a unique historic record of the mid-1980s unemployment crisis in the UK. This edition of Beyond Caring is part of Graham’s iconic 1980’s trilogy of UK books, being republished by MACK, which also includes A1 – The Great North Road (2020) and Troubled Land (Fall 2021).

BEYOND CARING

Ansi Common Lisp

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Books by Paul Graham