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BEST OF 2009
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THE BEST BOOKS OF 2009
SELECTED BY
Marco Delogu
Lesley A. Martin
George Slade
Antone Dolezal
Melanie McWhorter
Alec Soth
Daniel Espeset
Ron Jude & Danielle Mericle
Douglas Stockdale
Tricia Gabriel
Jeff Mermelstein
Ed Templeton
Richard Gordon
Eric Miles
Sara Terry
John Gossage
Laura Moya
Jennifer Thompson
Todd Hido
Martin Parr
Erik van der Weijde
Anne Kelly
Andrew Phelps
Michael Wolf
Debra Klomp Ching
Markus Schaden
Jeff Ladd
Selected by:
  • Marco Delogu
A Shimmer of Possibility.
Photographs by Paul Graham.
SteidlMack, Gottingen.

Printed in a 12 volume set.

Awarded the Paris Photo-Aperture Prize for the most significant photobook published in the past 15 years.

Inspired by Chekhov's short stories-and by his own contagious joy in the book form-photographer Paul Graham has created A Shimmer of Possibility, comprised of 12 individual books, each a photographic short story of everyday life. Some are simple and linear-a man smokes a cigarette while he waits for a bus in Las Vegas, or the camera tracks an autumn walk in Boston. Some entwine two, three or four scenes-while a couple carry their shopping home in Texas, a small child dances with a plastic bag in a garden. Some watch a quiet narrative break unexpectedly into a sublime moment-as a man cuts the grass in Pittsburgh it begins to rain, until the low sun breaks through and illuminates each drop. Graham's filmic haikus shun any forceful summation or tidy packaging. Instead, they create the impression of life flowing around and past us while we stand and stare, and make it hard not to share the artist's quiet astonishment with its beauty and grace. The 12 books gathered here are identical in trim size, but vary in length from just a single photograph to 60 pages of images made at one street corner.

OUT-OF-PRINT

Click here for the 2017 re-issue of A Shimmer of Possibility



Purchase A Shimmer of Possibility.
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