Immersing himself in the landscape and people of the United States has prompted Graham to more closely examine how the acuities and fallibilities of vision play into our perceptions of this country’s socioeconomic conditions. He continues to seek out innovative solutions to the challenges of photographing life as-it-is, creating works that both speak to the social fabric of contemporary America and reflect broader experiences of being and seeing in the world today.

As his first body of work produced in the United States, American Night chronicles Graham’s initial impressions of this country and its socioeconomic divisions. Through the combination of nearly invisible, overexposed images and full-color photographs, the work presents contrasting views that suggest contemporary America’s unspoken but omnipresent class divide.

The series a shimmer of possibility is the product of journeying and roaming across everyday America. Rather than striving for a single, decisive image, Graham embraces the stuttering process of seeing and recognizing. Unfolding as an American epic of the small and incidental, Graham’s sequences of photographs span gaps of time and place, their interweaving of narrative threads, their digressions and shifts of scene creating imaginative spaces and a sense of the country at large, while mirroring its social divisions and discrepancies alongside the unpredictable fluctuations of life. Originally released as a set of twelve individual books, Pier 24 Photography has dedicated a single gallery to each volume of a shimmer of possibility.

The Present recalls the tradition of New York street photography, encapsulating the frenetic energy of Manhattan and the constant shifts in attention between people and places on the city’s unruly stage. Through groupings of two or three photographs, Graham mimics the fluidity of urban consciousness by adjusting his camera’s focus across brief fractions of time. In The Present, tragedy, comedy, dignity and sadness are all woven into the cloth of life in the unavoidable condition of the city.

In conjunction with this exhibition, MACK will publish a 240-page hardcover monograph dedicated to these bodies of work.

About the Artist

Over the past three decades, Paul Graham has traveled widely, producing thirteen distinct bodies of work. He has published a dedicated monograph for nearly every series, most famously his twelve-volume collection entitled a shimmer of possibility. This book was honored with the 2011 Paris Photo Book Prize for the most important photography book published in the past 15 years.

Graham has been the subject of more than 80 solo exhibitions worldwide. In 2001, photographs from his series Paintings were included in the exhibition, Plateau of Humankind, as part of the 49th Venice Biennale. In 2003, American Night was exhibited at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, and in 2009, a shimmer of possibility was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In 2011, the Museum Folkwang, Essen and the Whitechapel Gallery in London mounted Paul Graham: Photographs 1981-2006, a twenty-five-year survey of the artist's work. Graham is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the 2009 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and the 2012 Hasselblad Foundation International Award, considered to be photography's highest honor.