Paul Graham
[Photographer, b. 1956, Stafford, England, lives in New York.]
...my photography doesn’t always fit into neat, coherent projects, so maybe I need to roll freeform around this world, unfettered, able to photograph whatever and whenever: the sky, my feet, the coffee in my cup, the flowers I just noticed, my friends and lovers, and, because it’s all my life, surely it will make sense? Perhaps.
Sometimes, when I go out with a camera, I don’t have a plan or even know what it is I am looking for. But I do go out every time and question how we make photographs of the world. It’s the same question that photographers have always asked: how is this world? And, what are the new ways to find that out?”
I have been taking photographs for 30 years now and it has steadily become less important to me that the photographs are about something in the most obvious way. I am interested in more elusive and nebulous subject matter. The photography I most respect pulls something out of the ether of nothingness… you can’t sum up the results in a single line.
There remains a sizeable part of the art world that simply does not get photography. They get artists who use photography to illustrate their ideas, installations, performances and concepts, who deploy the medium as one of a range of artistic strategies to complete their work. But photography for and of itself—photographs taken from the world as it is—are misunderstood as a collection of random observations and lucky moments, or muddled up with photojournalism, or tarred with a semi-derogatory documentary tag.
…when you have a worthwhile idea, you should be prepared to gamble on it, test it out and see what the world gives back.
Okay, so how do I make sense of that never ending flow, the fog that covers life here and now? How do I see through that, how do I cross that boundary? Do I walk down the street and make pictures of strangers, do I make a drama-tableaux with my friends, do I only photograph my beloved, my family, myself? Or maybe I should just photograph the land, the rocks and trees—they don't move or complain or push back. The old houses? The new houses? Do I go to a war zone on the other side of the world, or just to the corner store, or not leave my room at all? Yes and yes and yes.
All photographers hope to have some idea of what they’re hoping to find when they go out to shoot, but you have to be open to what the world throws at you, and engage with how it challenges and transforms your original idea.
