Born 1956, is a British fine-art and documentary photographer. He has published three major survey monographs as well as more than twenty additional dedicated photobooks.

His work has been widely exhibited internationally, including in the Italian Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001), at Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, and in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was included in Tate’s Cruel and Tender survey of twentieth-century photography in 2003, as well as in a European mid-career survey at Museum Folkwang in Essen, which toured to Deichtorhallen in Germany and the Whitechapel Gallery in London. In 2015, a survey of his American work titled The Whiteness of the Whale was exhibited at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

Graham has received numerous major awards and honors, including the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, the Hasselblad Award, the W. Eugene Smith Grant, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He also won the inaugural Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award for best photographic book of the past fifteen years.

Life and Career

Between 1981 and 1982, Graham photographed people and places along Britain’s A1 road, which largely follows the route of the historic Great North Road, beginning at the Bank of England in London and traveling north. This portrait of the nation was published in 1983 as A1: The Great North Road.

Subsequent major projects include Empty Heaven, devoted to Japan, and A Shimmer of Possibility, a twelve-volume work examining moments of everyday life in the United States. Throughout his career, Graham has been recognized for reshaping documentary photography through the use of color, narrative sequencing, and an emphasis on ambiguity and lived experience.

Reference List

Paul Graham (photographer). (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved January 19, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(photographer)