Background information

"The photobook 'The Whiteness of the Whale' brings together three American photo series by British photographer Paul GRAHAM: 'American Night,' 'A Shimmer of Possibility,' and 'The Present,' created as photographic works between 1998 and 2011. These remarkable photographic series reflect on the social fabric of contemporary America while attempting to find something closer to the experience of being and seeing in the contemporary world.

About the individual series

'American Night' (published as a photobook in 2003, out of print) explores the social divide of America - the great divide between haves and have-nots represented by the dichotomy of light and dark, presence and absence. The images oscillate between high-resolution, almost invisible photographs in bright light and the opposite - deeply saturated color images of freshly minted homes glowing under the blue skies of California.
'A Shimmer of Possibility (2007/2009, currently available as a reissue), is an American epic of the small and accidental. Originally published as twelve photographic visions of everyday life, the stuttering sequences form a kind of 'cinematic haiku', revealing the flow of life in everyday America, where we share moments with people waiting for a bus, mowing the lawn, or smoking a cigarette. In book form, 'A Shimmer of Possibility' won the 2011 Paris Photobook Award for the most significant photography book of the last 15 years.
'The Present' (2012, out of print) was shot in the streets of New York and unfolds the same scene in two images that happened separated in time by only a fraction. Here, the present is revealed as a fleeting and provisional arrangement, seen as part of an ever-flowing continuum of life: before/after, come/go, either/or.

Content

This lavishly produced volume 'The Whiteness of the Whale' on the work by Paul GRAHAM is printed with a wide range of colors on natural white paper and is published as a catalog to coincide with the British artist's first solo exhibition at Pier 24 in San Francisco. It includes newly commissioned texts by David Chandler and Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa.

About British photographer, Paul GRAHAM (b.1956)

Photo books by and about the work of Paul GRAHAM

Ed(s)/Author(s): David Chandler
Format: Silkbound HC, embossed & housed in a red printed mailing box, 24 x 30,5 cm., 240 pp., highly illustrated, text language: English