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Arts > Photo > 20th, 21st century > UK > Paul Graham
‘The only things that change are her cardigans and tops.’
Photograph: Paul Graham
Paul Graham on Mother: 'I wanted to look clearly at her last years on Earth' Light on a sleeping face, the pastels of a blouse – the British photographer’s latest book is a simple and profound collection of portraits of his mother G Wed 23 Oct 2019 12.29 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/oct/23/
Mother and Baby, Highgate DHSS, North London, 1984
Photograph: Paul Graham
‘In late 1983, I was commissioned by the Photographers’ Gallery to photograph my personal view of “Britain in 1984”. I was determined to examin the breakdown of the welfare benefits system across the nation.
Throughout 1984 and 1985, I visited dozens of social security and unemployment offices across the UK. Rarely did I see acceptable conditions or efficient service.’ Beyond Caring is part of Paul Graham’s 1980s trilogy of UK books being republished by MACK, which also includes A1 – The Great North Road and Troubled Land.
‘Workers became poker chips’: the hardship of Thatcher’s Britain – in pictures ‘The ennui of powerlessness’ ... Woman in Headscarf, DHSS Waiting Room, Bristol, 1984.
Originally self-published in 1985, Paul Graham’s images were made in the barren waiting rooms and corridors of the UK’s social security and unemployment offices G
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/may/27/
Baby, DHSS Office, Birmingham, 1984
Photograph: Paul Graham
‘Social security in Britain is about last resorts. It is a system designed to provide for the subsistence living needs of people who have little or no other source of income. It runs side by side with a national insurance scheme, and its postwar inception was designed for the approximately 600,000 people who were estimated to call on this system for their income maintenance each year.
It is a system which, in 1986, was providing for the living needs of more than 10 million people in the United Kingdom.’
‘Workers became poker chips’: the hardship of Thatcher’s Britain – in pictures ‘The ennui of powerlessness’ ... Woman in Headscarf, DHSS Waiting Room, Bristol, 1984. Originally self-published in 1985, Paul Graham’s images were made in the barren waiting rooms and corridors of the UK’s social security and unemployment offices G
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/may/27/
Father and Son, Stepney DHSS, East London, 1985
Photograph: Paul Graham
since I was in an unemployment office, aghast at the conditions there.
And here we now sit, watching these images recede into historic documents of a time and place, of lives foreshortened and cut adrift.
There was a political intoxication about those times, perhaps even a cruelty to its iron-willed ideology.
The country survived, but the price was paid by workers in their millions. And continues to be: workers’ rights and trade union power in the UK never recovered.’
‘Workers became poker chips’: the hardship of Thatcher’s Britain – in pictures ‘The ennui of powerlessness’ ... Woman in Headscarf, DHSS Waiting Room, Bristol, 1984. Originally self-published in 1985, Paul Graham’s images were made in the barren waiting rooms and corridors of the UK’s social security and unemployment offices G
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/may/27/
DHSS Emergency Centre, Elephant and Castle, South London, 1984
Photograph: Paul Graham
‘Photography like this, direct from life, is having a crisis of legitimacy right now. The fact that people portrayed in photographs might not have “agency”, be it in the unemployment office, or simply walking in the street, renders such imagery – unstaged, unposed, naturalistic – unacceptable to some.
This may well be the new paradigm, none of us are deaf to the arguments. If we only permit the staged, we are bound by our beliefs and limited by our preconceptions. We would force the world to conform to how we imagine it should be.’
‘Workers became poker chips’: the hardship of Thatcher’s Britain – in pictures ‘The ennui of powerlessness’ ... Woman in Headscarf, DHSS Waiting Room, Bristol, 1984. Originally self-published in 1985, Paul Graham’s images were made in the barren waiting rooms and corridors of the UK’s social security and unemployment offices G
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/may/27/
Related: Paul Graham Alle drei Motive aus der Serie Beyond Caring, 1984-85 © Paul Graham, 2008 Paul Graham-Retrospektive kommt in die Deichtorhallen Red Box http://www.redbox.de/news/latest_news/detail.php?nr=35327
Alle drei Motive aus der Serie Beyond Caring, 1984-85 © Paul Graham, 2008
Paul Graham-Retrospektive kommt in die Deichtorhallen Red Box http://www.redbox.de/news/latest_news/detail.php?nr=35327
Crouched Man, DHSS Waiting Room, Bristol, 1984
Photograph: Paul Graham
‘So often it seems people (men mostly, although Thatcher was up there) crave power over others. Power is a drug, you drink from that cup, and become intoxicated. You start to tell others how to live their lives, what rules they must obey, what principles they should live by.
The somber warning concealed within the huge unemployment numbers was: do not ask for a fair wage, do not ask for a share of economic power, it is ours, to give or take. That is the tragedy here, of the ready willingness to ordain the parameters of others’ lives.’
‘Workers became poker chips’: the hardship of Thatcher’s Britain – in pictures ‘The ennui of powerlessness’ ... Woman in Headscarf, DHSS Waiting Room, Bristol, 1984. Originally self-published in 1985, Paul Graham’s images were made in the barren waiting rooms and corridors of the UK’s social security and unemployment offices G
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/may/27/
Men Waiting, Whitechapel DHSS, East London, 1985
Photograph: Paul Graham
‘Along with many, I was unemployed in the early 1980s.
There were no jobs to speak of, and none to be found.
Claiming unemployment benefit required that you attend the local department of employment office in person. As the number of people without work increased dramatically, the queues to “sign on” lengthened.
Waiting times moved into hours, mornings, afternoons, then whole days.
It took a long while for me to realise precisely what it was I was witnessing here: these offices were where political ideology and citizens’ lives collided.’
‘Workers became poker chips’: the hardship of Thatcher’s Britain – in pictures ‘The ennui of powerlessness’ ... Woman in Headscarf, DHSS Waiting Room, Bristol, 1984. Originally self-published in 1985, Paul Graham’s images were made in the barren waiting rooms and corridors of the UK’s social security and unemployment offices G
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/may/27/
Cafe Assistants, Compass Cafe, Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, November 1982
Photograph: Paul Graham
‘To make the most of the time that my father had off work, we would travel overnight, following a carefully prepared route up through the Midlands and the industrial north, to arrive at Cumberland in time for breakfast. I have many fond memories of these journeys, but they all hinge on the central thrill of the trip – that we were travelling up the Great North Road’
Are we nearly there yet? Take a 1980s road trip down the A1 – in pictures Garages, endless fields, Little Chefs … Paul Graham spent the early 80s going up and down the Great North Road with nothing but his camera and a few fry-ups for company G Tue 29 Sep 2020 07.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2020/sep/29/
Paul Graham
http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2021/may/27/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2020/sep/29/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/oct/23/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/mar/08/
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/apr/11/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/apr/11/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/19/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/mar/05/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/mar/02/
Related > Anglonautes > Arts
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Related > Anglonautes > History > 20th century > UK
Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013 PM 1979-1990
Thatcher era > The miners' strike 1984-1985
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