Paul Graham, Hasselblad Award 2012, 1981 & 2011
Paul Graham
MACK
Hardcover
104 pages
200 x 250 mm
2012
ISBN 9781907946332
In honour of the 2012 award, the Hasselblad Centre in Gothenburg, Sweden is showing an exhibition, together with this book 1981 & 2011, which unites Graham’s first published work A1 – The Great North Road (1981) and his latest The Present (2011). Edited by Paul Graham in collaboration with Dragana Vujanovic and Louise Wolthers from The Hasselblad Foundation, the book links this thirty-year span, together with an essay written by David Campany, author, curator and artist.
At the beginning of the 1980’s Graham was among the first photographers to unite contemporary colour practice with the classic ‘social documentary’ genre. In 1981/2 he completed A1 – The Great North Road, a series of colour photographs from the length of the British A1 road, which forged a dramatic challenge to the black and white tradition that dominated British photography to that point. This work, along with his other photographs of the 1980’s, were pivotal in reinvigorating and transforming photographic practice in the UK and abroad.
In 2011 Paul Graham released The Present, which embraces street photography, a genre unique to photography where the artist works with the ceaseless flow of life. These images break with the traditional approach of locking the world into frozen instants and instead brings us each scene together with its double, the briefest fraction of time apart, so that we glimpse the continuum, the before/after and coming/ going of life’s dazzling dance.
Designed by Paul Graham and MACK, printed in colour throughout,1981 & 2011 aligns these two bodies of Graham’s work across the 3 decades spanning his career. With David Campany’s incisive essay, we can piece together and explore the concerns that link and bind an artist over the years making this a salient book on the passage of creativity in the observable world.
Paul Graham, winner of the 2012 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, is a vital figure in contemporary photography, working for over thirty years and continually challenging different genres of photographic practice. His work has been widely embraced, with exhibitions at the Tate and the Museum of Modern Art, and published in more than 12 monographs. The Hasselblad Award is considered photography’s highest prize for lifetime achievement and the list of past winners is a roll call of photography’s greatest masters.
About the Artist
Paul Graham (b.1956) is a British artist who works in Fine Art photography. His pieces typically show people and objects in realistic settings with surreal or unusual elements added to the image. Though Graham worked as a photographer during his 20s, he did not have his first show until he was 30. In 2012, the Hasselblad Foundation awarded him the International Award in Photography, making him the only British winner of the award. Graham is the author of over a dozen books and survey monographs that document different areas of the world.
About the Publisher
MACK is an independent art and photography publishing house based in London. Mack works with established and emerging artists, writers and curators, and cultural institutions, releasing between 20-25 books per year. The publisher was founded in 2010 in London by Michael Mack.
