17 – Paul Graham

Paul Graham became internationally renowned for his photography, which has been revolutionising the art/documentary genre since the 1980s. In the early 2000s, in New York, the photographer took a series of portraits of city dwellers walking along 42nd Street in the late afternoon sun. Reversing the conventions of portrait photography, he chose the moment when each individual closed his eyes, generally deemed by photographers as accidental. By showing people who are not looking, Sightless tackles the theme of blindness on a personal level: Graham himself lost his sight in a childhood accident for a few weeks. Twenty years later, Images Vevey brings New York crowd back to the streets of Vevey. The project presents a multicultural city before the digital tsunami, at a time when passers-by were not immersed in their smartphones, but in themselves.

Exhibition layout and design by Images Vevey and the artist