Gallery image of American Night - Image by Pier24.org
I have found myself again revisiting the work of Paul Graham. The interview with Quentin Bajac (chief curator of photography at MoMA) in the course notes referenced Graham. Baja expressed a need for photographers to be flexible with their ideas and let them evolve. It is ok for the end product to differ from the original idea. We practised this in Exercise 5.1.
Bajac went on to say that on the one hand you have photographers that have the idea and illustrate it. At the other end of the scale you have photographers shooting without preconceived ideas and putting the pieces of the jigsaw together to construct something.
Putting ‘puzzle pieces’ together, I think, applies to Paul Grahams 3 pieces of work that form ‘The Whiteness of the Whale’, an exhibition displayed at San Francisco’s Pier 24 Photography in 2015/2016. This brought together 3 of his series: American Night (1998–2002), A shimmer of possibility (2004–06), and The Present (2009–11).
Paul Graham described each of the sets of work as utilising different aspects of photography: Light (American Night); Time (A shimmer of possibility); Awareness (The Present). He then aligned these directly with functions of the camera: Aperture (controlling the amount of light); Shutter (controlling the time of the exposure); Focus (controlling awareness/perception). It seemed right that I found this piece as I come towards the end of EYV as the aim of this course is to introduce all of these pieces of the camera and how they can be used creatively in image making.
American Night (1998 – 2002) delivers on the one hand extremely over exposed images of the poor and poor neighbourhoods, then colourful images of middle class areas on the other. He uses the over exposed technique to make the viewer work at seeing something that they may choose to ignore on a routine basis. He describes it as a ‘psychological blindness’ where people have learnt to edit out a set of our population. Although he made these images in America it is also true of Britain today.
I have to admit that I saw a selection of the American Night series on his website early on in the course and I did not understand them. I put it down to them being ‘arty’. Seeing them now and hearing him explain the concept makes me really appreciate the strong message he was conveying. It highlighted my blindness to the ‘concept’ and in turn brought me in to the group of people who had ‘edited out a set of the population’.
Gallery image of A Shimmer of Possibility - Image by Pier24.org
A shimmer of possibility (2004 – 2006) was the second series in this compilation. This work had been brought to my attention by my tutor as a reference following my Square Mile assignment. This is a series of stories made up of individual moments in time. He uses sequences to mirror the human ability to instantly study a scene – the man, his hands, what is behind him. Graham describes a photograph as selecting ‘one piece out of the whole’ H calls it ‘spotlight consciousness’. Whereas ‘…shimmer…’ isn’t spotlight. He calls it ‘lantern’, where there are multiple frames of the same scene. He expresses it as ‘moment arriving, the moment, moment after’.
Gallery image of The Present - Image by Pier24.org
The Present (2009-2011) is a series I have reviewed on this blog before. I used the technique in a personal exercise that I called ‘The Carnival’. This work is ‘Life as it is in New York’, Paul Graham’s home. With these images, diptych’s and triptych’s, he holds one position and describes it as ‘life as it comes at you’. Depth of field is used to show people arriving and departing the scene. Graham sees the work as ‘folding time’ and how in 10-20 years time how viewers ‘see what the present amounted to at that point in time’.
This final point is one that has intrigued me since starting the course. I have viewed and studied images and found that I enjoy the ‘nostalgic’ nature of them. The colours, the fashions, the brands. This is especially the case in Graham’s ‘A1: The Great North Road’ and a lot of William Eggleston’s work. Time certainly adds a dimension that would not have been present when first viewed by audiences at the time. I will be interested in how nostalgia impacts some of the images I have taken in my ‘EU Referendum’, ‘housing development’ and ‘Spa Road shops’ assignments.
Although the subject matter is different the ‘multiples’ and stories can be compared with Rinko Kawauchi’s ‘Illuminance’ series. I have also increased my understanding of the ‘external context’ both of these works in terms of the presentation and display styles. It was interesting to see the display decision of placing ‘The Present’ images close to the floor to give the viewer the feeling of being in the street. Kawauchi has used a book with ‘Japanese fold’ style pages to present a ‘cycle’ of images.
The use of ‘multiple’ images and the sequencing of them to convey a story and/or feeling is something that I want to succeed at in my final assignment.
References:
Martyn Rainbird 