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| Photographs by Paul Graham was published by Phiadon, 1999. |
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| Other work by Paul Graham |
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| Other articles by Gavin Murphy |
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| Army Stop and Search, Warrenpoint |
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| Great North Road Garage, Edinburgh, November |
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| An Aesthetic of the Banal |
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| Paul Graham is probably best known in these parts for his Troubled Land series of 1987. This set of photoworks took the social landscape of Northern Ireland as its object of scrutiny. Since this work was met locally with a mixed response at the time, Paul Graham - the book - offers an opportunity to consider once again his contribution to an understanding of social and cultural terrain. |
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| The book sets out to give a solid overview and understanding of Graham's work to date through high quality reproductions of photographs from his major projects, interviews with the artist, selected writings and a major essay on Graham's output by Andrew Wilson. Photographs from earlier projects such as A1, The Great North Road (1983) and Beyond Caring (1984), a study of dole offices around Britain are counter posed against more recent projects such as New Europe (1993) and Empty Heaven (1995), the latter project being the result of visits to Japan. |
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| Andrew Wilson's essay sets the pace with regard to the question of value in Graham's work. Graham's photography is placed firmly within the tradition of fine art. The works of Greuze, David, Hogarth and Constable are all compared to Graham's so as to mark Graham as a cherished inheritor of this tradition. Graham's work is then contrasted to two strains of contemporary photographic practice. On the one hand, there is art-photography, which Wilson characterises as having a tendency to concentrate on the photographic process to the detriment of image construction. On the other, there is documentary reportage, characterised in this instance as having an inherent didactic, if not sensational, element. Against these, Graham's work is seen to focus on seemingly low-key aspects of everyday life and, through metaphor, draws an underlying history to the surface. Graham's ambivalence and passivity towards the image is valued. Accordingly, Graham not only 'visualizes the invisible' but also, in Wilson's words, produces an 'iconography of thought as a response to history'. |
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| This 'iconography of thought' is taken to be a critical vision - one capable of either undercutting conventionalised readings of the world in which we live or enriching present awareness of our surroundings. Yet it remains unclear as to how Graham's works achieve this. Certainly, many of the works fall short in terms of the critical. Take Television Portrait, Cathy, London as an example. The allure of the image would appear to lie in sharp formal zigzagging of cushion, arms and cushion at the visual centre of the piece as it contrasts with the softened tones and rich colouration of its surroundings. The mind rests with the overall visual harmony of the piece rather than following through the thought that this could be an exploration of modern consumerism. With regard to the latter, it actually yields very little. Likewise with Great North Road Garage, Edinburgh, November from The A1 series. Here, the focus returns repeatedly to the visual sheen and resonance of this work with its echoed signs, window frames and neon lighting. These works would suggest that Graham's strength lies in a keen eye for finding beauty in the banal and less an acute critical vision arising from it. |
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| The question of a critical value remains fraught when history becomes a prominent issue in Graham's work. Roots in a Bottle, Tokyo, when considered in relation to the Empty Heaven series as a whole, can be taken as a metaphor for contemporary Japanese culture's separation from its past: surviving precariously in a sealed enclosure, thin on nutrient and separated from rich soil. Certainly, the two diptychs Hirohito and Imperial Army Photograph, Tokyo; Rainbow Sugar, Tokyo and Surrender Photograph, Tokyo; Primed Pink, Tokyo reinforce this reading with their repeated message of a military history covered by a thin veneer of ecstatic kitsch. One wonders if such work merely re-asserts existing contours of debate in Britain particularly given the media's recent preoccupation with Japan's record in W.W.II. Indeed, in the face of this, one begs for an analysis of the multifarious ways in which recent history seeps through contemporary gloss. The point here is that in these works metaphor tends to close a reading rather than complicate one. Graham's work dealing with Northern Ireland is contrasted repeatedly with traditional documentary photography by each of the key contributors. His photographs are celebrated for their eschewal of dramatic cliche and the picturesque in favour of richer imagery resonating with cultural history. Yet, once again, it is doubtful if this is actually achieved. True, attention given to the expanse of stony beach in Army Stop and Search, Warrenpoint does push the image beyond traditional painterly visions of Carlingford Lough and the Cooley Mountains. But this is only to the extent that the 'ordinary' coastal setting can be undercut by the image of the checkpoint falling before the town. While the dramatic is rejected for a more sombre approach, it is difficult to construe this as resonating with cultural history. In contrast to standard media reportage, the volume is turned down in an effort to sensitise vision, but only in as much as a certain pathos resounds. There is little sense of the complexity of historical relations underpinning conflict in Northern Ireland, little sense of the deep-rooted significance of a British army checkpoint near the Trevor monument and more sense of an incapacity to 'visualize the invisible' through this particular approach. |
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| At root then the strength of Graham's work would seem to lie less in an ability to stimulate open critical thought before the subject under scrutiny than in cultivating an aesthetic of the banal. Graham's photographs are technically competent and the book does much to foreground this through its high standard of reproduction. Indeed, as part of Phaidon's series on contemporary artists, it reasserts photography as a key area of artistic practice. Nonetheless, the question does surface as to the ability of photographic observation of the everyday to draw forth the dynamic between past and present. For it seems that where the best critical artworks will either make us doubt our very presumptions or draw us into a rich terrain of understanding, Graham's work will at most shimmy lightly between the two. |
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| Gavin Murphy |
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