Hardcover in dust jacket. With a 10 page text booklet.

Photographs from Japan 1989 - 1995. Fotografien aus Japan 1989 - 1995. (Katalogbuch zur Ausstellung im Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, 19 Aug. bis 12 Nov. 1995).

‘Empty Heaven’ – Photographs from Japan 1989–1995 is Paul Graham’s first museum exhibition in Germany. The work consists of 55 colour photographs taken over the last seven years on numerous visits to the “Land of the Rising Sun”. The are the result of Paul Graham’s intensive encounter with Japan, its socio-cultural structures and its history.

In 1941 Japan declared war on the United States and Great Britain with the aggression of Pearl Harbour and so entered World War Two. After the dropping of two atomic bombs by the Americans on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945, the Japanese bid for hegemony in Asia ended in unconditional surrender on 15 August 1945.

Fifty years later Paul Graham’s work sets out to question the nation’s apparent amnesia. His aim is to reach the point where strenuously repressed memories of painful past collide head-on with the social and psychological discipline found in the economic superpower that is modern Japan. ... Collectively these seemingly disconnected subjects begin to resonate, to coalesce, the trivial becomes shocking, the shocking becomes commonplace. Questions about Japan and questions for us all begin to emerge from the work. Do we have to bear the weight of our history or should we shield ourselves against it? What should be hidden, re-written, sweetened, masked? What price do we pay to maintain order in our society? (Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg)