Paul Graham study visit
It is always a pleasure to meet OCA students, but Saturday proved even more pleasurable thanks to an informative tour through the Paul Graham show provided by Michael Lowton of the Whitechapel Gallery. I would strongly urge photography students who get the chance to visit this exhibition as Graham’s work has a far greater visceral impact when seen as gallery size prints. While I have long been a fan of Beyond Caring, I have not always felt that Graham’s subsequent work has quite the same ability to stop you in your tracks. This was largely dispelling by seeing End of an Age occupying a room and arranged with the combination of flash sharp and hazy colour images of clubbers, as Michael Lowton said ‘it is almost a case of how do you want your reality?’
If the haze and clarity of End of an Age appears almost random, this is not the case with American Night with it’s carefully arranged sequence of extreme high key images judderingly interrupted by images of blind men, the American dream home and a woman sprawled on the kerb – exhausted, ill, just been attacked? As an exercise in exploration of bounded awareness it transfixes.
And then there is Shimmer of Possibility which is already featured in this video on WeAreOCA and possibly doesn’t quite live up to the expectation generated. But then as I agreed with Jan, you do not need to love everything a photographer produces to think that they have important things to say.
An unexpected bonus was a visit to the archive room. Ian Berry is now a name closely associated with vibrant colour work for Magnum and remembered for his earlier work of strife around the world, but his This is Whitechapel prints showed an intimacy and a side of the East End which now feels long in the past as you exit the gallery into the hipsterville that is modern day Shoreditch.
11 thoughts on “Paul Graham study visit”
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Thanks Gareth for the post and using one of my photographs!
The link to my blog of this day is here …
http://amano-artofphotography.blogspot.com/2011/05/paul-graham-oca-day-at-whitechapel.html
Amano
It’s also good to follow your links Gareth!
AS
It was great to have the opportunity to meet up with other students again – so invaluable in what is mainly a distance learning Course. Thank you for arranging the day Gareth.
I don’t know why but I left the Gallery feeling a bit flat somehow. Maybe it’s because there was a sense for me of Paul Graham seeming quite distant from his subjects although I know this fits very much with the idea of the camera being objective and realistic. I certainly wouldn’t want to disparage Graham though. “Beyond Caring” really did capture that sense of dispiritedness that often hung around unemployment benefit offices and “Troubled Land” was quite striking for me with its almost hidden motifs until I looked closer.
I had time afterwards to go to Somerset House and the Sony Awards which was such a contrast. Whereas the Whitechapel was almost reverential in its atmosphere and layout, Somerset House was buzzing with people all peering closely at the photographs as well as enjoying themselves outside in the sun. To me it was a feast for the senses.
A good day all round. Thanks again Gareth.
Catherine
http://cblearninglog.wordpress.com/.
A few thoughts from me. Thanks again, to Gareth and other attendees for a great day.
http://eileenrafferty.blogspot.com/2011/05/paul-graham.html
I had lots of thoughts….found this event interesting in many ways, thanks to everyone on the day who made it so.
http://janfairburnoca.blogspot.com/2011/05/paul-graham-exhibition-whitechapel.html
I wrote something on your blog but now I find I need an ID of some sort to post it so instead of chucking it away I thought I’d post it here. ‘ }
‘I enjoyed your write up; it’s one of the most pleasing aspect of tutoring to see developing awareness.
As regards your initial thought on intentionality; I always advise not to think too much when you’re shooting just respond, then discover what you’ve done after the fact, think deeply about it, and that will naturally inform your approach next time.
The process of photography isn’t over once you’ve pressed the button, selecting and editing from the material that you’ve gathered is just as much a part of the process. By disregarding anything you didn’t intend you’re losing the power of photography as a tool of discovery; the photography should be showing you, not you showing the photography.
If I’ve come to some similar conclusions as Paul Graham then it’s because we’ve both been thinking about it for a long time and over the same period of photographic history.
To sustain making resonant images, and prolong one’s interest in the activity, in the long term, one’s conceptualisation has to keep moving on… oh looking back up (your blog)I see I’ve paraphrased something else he said hahahaha… so, almost necessarily, one’s reading of one’s own work can sometimes appear to be very esoteric to those just setting out on the photography road.
What will you be saying about your own work in thirty years time? Will you still be making new discoveries, however marginal and vague they may appear from your current perspective, or just repeating your greatest hits?
It’s a perspective to consider when evaluating work’
thanks Clive :o) It isn’t so much that the intention changes when shooting, or even reading something into an image that you may have captured unintentionally that bugs me, its the saying after the event that that was the intention and you know that it’s all rot ;oD
‘its the saying after the event that that was the intention’
I think they call that marketing. ‘}
Hahahahaha
exactly 😉 one man’s marketing is another man’s *cough*
It was the section called Empty Heaven that interested me most.
I have not been to Japan but am aware of Zen Buddhism, a doctrine in which “Empty” does not have negative connotations. I think it is therefore a mistake to assume that this was meant to be about the superficiality of Japanese life.
Zen is extremely profound! Google “Koan” and perhaps you’ll see why. Asian culture often has great depth and complexity and I felt this was mirrored in Graham’s work.
Struth | We are OCA says
[…] will start at 11am and last for about two hours. The last Whitechapel tour attracted very positive feedback from students. The study visits are intended as informal opportunities to meet other students and learn more […]