Paul Graham: But Still, It Turns
With But Still, It Turns, Paul Graham curates a subtle thesis and revitalising manifesto for photography.
The dynamic and diverse work gathered here advocates an unashamed, but not uncomplicated, dedication to the brilliant tangle of reality. Without being tempted by the artifice of the studio or the restrictive demands of the conventional documentary, these artists tell open-ended stories that shift, warp, and branch attuned unfailingly to life-as-it-is.
Included are Gregory Halpern’s Californian waking dream ZZYZX; Vanessa Winship’s peripatetic exercise in empathy she dances on Jackson; the human assemblages of Curran Hatleberg’s Lost Coast; Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa’s rich and multitudinous One Wall a Web; the mortality-tinged America of Richard Choi’s What Remains; RaMell Ross’ visionary documentary work South County; the collaborative project Index G by Emanuele Bruti & Piergiorgio Casotti; and Kristine Potter’s disorientating exploration of the American landscape and masculinity in Manifest.
All these works are brought together in harmony and enlightening dissonance, as Graham teases out a new photographic form. Its title is the words allegedly murmured by Gallileo after being forced to withdraw his observations of the world; what can be seen here, in Graham’s words, is “all the world’s infinite consanguinity”.
The book includes essays by Paul Graham, Rebecca Bengal, RaMell Ross, and Ian Penman.
Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York, in February 4 – May 9, 2021.
About the Author
Paul Graham has played an essential role in dissolving the barriers between the worlds of documentary and fine art photography. Starting in the early 1980s, Graham’s use of color in the role traditionally occupied by black-and-white documentary was a radical challenge to the unwritten rules of engaged photography.
Troubled Land (on the Northern Ireland conflict) and Beyond Caring (addressing unemployment in the time of Margaret Thatcher) shifted the debate on how such issues could be visually articulated. With an extraordinarily long and active career of four decades, Graham has published eighteen monographs and three survey books. He moved to New York in 2002 and has worked in the United States since then. Most notably, a shimmer of possibility was published as a set of twelve books and presented as a solo exhibition at MoMA, New York. He is represented by Pace Gallery in the United States, and galleries in London and Berlin.
More info about the book:
https://mackbooks.co.uk/
More info about the exhibition:
https://www.icp.org/
