Paul Graham - photography is so easy it’s ridiculous

 

Paul Graham - Does Yellow Run Forever, 2014

Yes, photography is so easy it's ridiculous and that's what makes it so hard. In the end it's not so much about making the pictures it's what you do with them. It's about process, having an idea, making the pictures and then giving them life.

It seems to me that so many photographers have a very narrow view of process. Because the image making part is so captivating, so seductive, it's easy to make the pictures with no idea in mind and no end in sight.

Paul Graham is a camera artist who has a profound and insightful view of process. Graham makes deceptively simple images, loaded and layered, addressing strong ideas and outcomes. You could call him a conceptual documentary photographer. I think Martin Parr coined that descriptor. Although Graham knows where his work and projects are heading he also embraces the unexpected and let's intuition work for him too.
Underpinning it all, Graham takes a sharply intelligent view. He engages in critical study, thought, and reflection about the reality of society and this shows in his work. Further Graham is not afraid to say what he thinks and his pointed observations are well worth taking on board. Here are a few:

...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.

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.

To photographers, street photography is a Himalayan range that the foolhardy pit themselves against. Or maybe it’s a shibboleth, a mystical visual code that only the indoctrinated members of our cult speak and revere.

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.

...when you have a worthwhile idea, you should be prepared to gamble on it, test it out and see what the world gives back. 

You can go to the Paul Graham archive HERE. 

Paul Graham - New Orleans, 2005, from the series a shimmer of possibility