Last year, at the first Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Photography Forum, Paul Graham gave a lecture titled The Unreasonable Apple, in which he criticised the “sizeable part of the art world that simply does not get photography”.

“They get artists who use photography to illustrate their ideas, installations, performances and concepts, who deploy the medium as one of a range of artistic strategies to complete their work,” he continued. “But photography for and of itself – photographs taken from the world as it is – are misunderstood as a collection of random observations and lucky moments, or muddled up with photojournalism, or tarred with a semi-derogatory ‘documentary’ tag. This is tremendously sad, for if we look back, the simple truth is that the majority of the great photographic works of art of the 20th century operate in precisely this territory: from Walker Evans to Robert Frank, Diane Arbus to Garry Winogrand, from Stephen Shore travelling across America in Uncommon Places; Robert Adams navigating the freshly minted suburbs of Denver in The New West, or William Eggleston spiralling towards Jimmy Carter’s hometown in Election Eve.”

Fast forward just over 12 months, and Graham has a major mid-career survey at the Whitechapel Gallery, Paul Graham: Photographs 1981-2006. A contradiction? Maybe – but maybe not. For although the show collects together images from series such as Beyond Caring, 1984-85 (a grim look at UK dole offices in the last recession), End of an Age, 1996-97 (candid shots of young European clubbers), and A Shimmer of Possibility, 2004-06, (beautiful images of American life on the right and wrong sides of the tracks), the rhetoric around it is at pains to establish Graham’s art credentials. The show “demonstrates the crucial role he has played in the development of photography where documentary and art merge”, the press release states. “His innovative approach rejected the classic documentary, choosing to remix the rich history and genres of photography to create a fresh and unique visual language,” it continues. “As a pioneer of colour photography in the UK, his challenging of the black-and-white tradition has been influential.”

I’m not convinced Graham’s work is more ‘art’ because it’s in colour and innovative and, following his argument, suspect he wouldn’t be either. But it’s good to see him getting the recognition he deserves, especially in the UK – this is the first major survey of his work here. The show was initiated by Ute Eskildsen at the Museum Folkwang, Essen, who started work on the project in 2006 and showed it in 2009. It then moved to the Haus der Photographie in Hamburg before coming here, just as government cuts are starting to bite. “We’ve been working on the project for a long time and the decision was made to show the work in a very different economic climate,” says Kirsty Ogg, who curated the UK version of the show. “Unfortunately the economic cycle has looped back round again to meet Paul at his very early work.” Or, as Graham put it in his MoMA lecture: “Perhaps here we have stumbled upon a partial, but nonetheless astonishing description of the creative act at the heart of serious photography: nothing less than the measuring and folding of the cloth of time itself.”

Paul Graham: Photographs 1981–2006 is on show from 20 April – 19 June. Entry to the exhibition is free.

www.whitechapelgallery.org