For ‘Art on Paper’ magazine
During last summer’s blackout, New Yorkers walked home to all corners of the city and beyond and learned the value of public transportation. Life went back to normal after a day or two, but for America’s poorest citizens, lack of mobility is a daily obstacle. In his latest body of work, ‘American Night’, British photographer Paul Graham turned his camera on lone individuals in locations around the U.S. as they trudged by roadsides or waited for a ride. By overexposing his film and intervening in the developing process, Graham obscured each photograph with a veil-like overlay of white color. The resulting bleakness of the images not only emphasizes the barrenness of the urban and rural landscapes he photographs but introduces a metaphor for social blindness.
It’s difficult to make out the subject matter in each photograph, but gradually the seedy details of industrial streets and low-end strip malls start to materialize. A figure walks or stands alone at the center of each scene. Excluded from America’s car culture, these individuals are left to wait for the bus, as a one-legged man outside the Yum Yum restaurant does. Next to an empty parking lot of a housing complex, a woman stands with hands upturned in pleading or frustration as a car passes by without stopping. Equally poignant is a tiny figure in a parking lot, vast and barren as a desert.
Although each picture features one person, the focus is less on particular circumstances than the general plight of those forced to exist on foot in a hostile, car-centered environment. Like Graham’s photos from the mid-80s of English welfare offices, the images elaborate on the hardships and indignities of poverty. But while the subjects of those pictures waited together for assistance, survival for these solitary individuals requires active struggle. Their presence emphasizes the impersonal nature of both urban and rural planning in the U.S., which, in its glamorizing of the open road, also reinforces social exclusion. The photographs, shrouded in their white veils, suggest society’s willingness to ignore the problem. Despite their difficulties, the loners in ‘American Night’ have a mysterious quality, saving the photographs from pure social commentary and imbuing them with intrigue.