The Spirit of Graeme Williams

Paul Trevor is one of the best, but least known, photographers working in the UK. This series, shot in the late 80s, is a new twist on the street photo, but totally unlike anything I have seen before or since. Taking a small slice of action at a passing moment, he accumulates these engaging snatches into a rolling theatre of street activity. It is a bit like walking the street ourselves and resembles our habit of picking up on small details that fleetingly engage us and then stringing them all together. He makes it all look so easy and so natural, and herein lies the value of this body of work.

Martin Parr

Paul Trevor started photographing England in black-and-white in the early 1970s. He was co-founder of the Exit Photography Group, whose collaborations produced strong social documentaries made up of photographs and interviews depicting life in big British cities at that time. Even if his personal work remains little known outside the UK, he played a pioneering role in photography by co-founding several collaborative projects.

Martin Parr was born in England in 1952 and became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1994. He is world famous for his unique perspective on social documentary, fashion and advertising photography and is ver y active as a professor, curator, publisher and editor. Martin Parr built up one of the largest photobook collections and has strongly contributed to the artistic recognition of the photobook over the past 15 years.

Martin Parr nominated Paul Trevor for this edition of PHOTOPAPER. It has 16 pages. Images above showing selected pages.