Paul Graham: ‘Does Yellow Run Forever?’
by Karen Rosenberg
A sentimental lyricism, with strong Romantic leanings, distinguishes Paul Graham’s latest show of photographs, organized by Pace and Pace/MacGill, from his social-documentary efforts. Here, his subjects include rainbow-streaked landscapes in western Ireland, pawnshop storefronts in New York’s rougher neighborhoods and tender portraits of a woman — the photographer’s partner — asleep in various rooms in New Zealand.
Mr. Graham sticks to his signature installation format, hanging prints of different sizes at varying heights. But as is rarely the case in his shows, the relationship between placement and content seems almost too obvious: The rainbows hang high on the wall, and the street views skirt the floor, with the sleepers sitting at roughly bed-height in between. The pictures of the sleeping woman, however, change the entire dynamic of the show: its emotional highs and lows, its contrast of Constable-esque countryside and urban grit. They are exceptionally lovely images, framing the sleeper’s graceful features with colorful blankets and reveling in the strange poses of deep slumber (arms swaddling head, back curling away from pillows). They give the pawnshops and rainbows a magical, somnolent quality, making them part of her dream world, even as they present their own dream of contentment.