Photographer research

Photo Books

When researching the work of Paul Graham and his documentation of the working class from the 1980s, I came across some of his more recent work. A book by Paul Graham in particular caught my eye. As part of our brief we have been asked to create a photo book, therefore we have been looking at photo books in class and i have also been looking at them in my spare time to gain inspiration and ideas on how to lay out my work, what shape book use, what colour pages would work best ect. 

A book named 'The Present' caught my eye as I was instantly attracted to the way the photographer had chosen to present his images in the book. 

I like the use of blank spaces around the images and the way in which there is no particular sequence to the images. The images are presented in different sizes in different areas on each page. This encourages the viewer to look across all areas of the book rather than just focusing on the same spot for every page. 

Paul Graham; Present


During a tutorial with my tutor I took along the book 'The Present' and explained this is where i had mainly found inspiration. When looking through the work by Paul Graham in this book, i learnt that the idea of the images are that two images that may be presented on a page together are images that have been taken in the same area maybe minutes or seconds between one another; 

http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/thepresent.html#a

http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/thepresent.html#a

Myself and my tutor noticed a slight similarity in terms of this concept where two images are taken at similar points in my own work. With having this i now hope to experiment with a similar lay out to what i have seen in Paul Grahams book but with my own take on it. 

I like the idea of having two images such as these presented in a book across a double page, where the viewer gets to see two very different images, un composed action shot vs a more composed shot which follows. I feel this concept in my work and Paul Grahams gives the viewer a feel that they too are walking down the street looking at these sights themselves. 

I feel really pleased with this work i have produced and i can't believe i found this similarity in my own work and another photographers before even researching or looking at the photographers work myself.