the English countryside with a large-format camera. He then hung the pictures upside down, like camera obscura images. In 1998 Graham produced his definitive work on this theme, a series of seven monumental images of Welsh oaks printed on color paper to produce warm deep sepia and charcoal hues. A postage stamp depicting Graham's photograph, Basement Camera Shop circa 1937 was issued on March 22, 2013, by Canada Post as part of their Canadian Photography series. The image is a recreation of a snapshot discovered by the artist at an antique store. Graham placed himself in the photograph as the owner standing at the counter, waiting for a customer. Film In 1994, Graham began a series of films and videos in which he himself appears as the principal character: Halcion Sleep (1994), Vexation Island (1997) (shown at Canadian pavilion of the 1997 Venice Biennale), How I Became a Ramblin' Man (1999), and The Phonokinetoscope (2002). In The Phonokinetoscope Graham's engagement with the origins of cinema and its eventual demise surface. In this work, Graham takes up a prototype by Thomas Edison and puts forward an argument for the relation between sound and image in film. In Vexation Island (1997), a shipwrecked sailor, played by Graham, wakes up on a tropical island only to be knocked unconscious by a falling coconut that he has succeeded in shaking out of a palm tree; after a while he reawakens, returns to the tree and the cycle repeats. Later, in Rheinmetall/Victoria 8 (2003), two increasingly obsolete technologies, the typewriter and film projector, face off against one another—with the latter projecting a film of the former. The film Lobbing Potatoes at a Gong (1969) (2006), shot on 16mm and presented as a looped projection, fictitiously documents a 1969 performance strongly reminiscent of the Fluxus movement. The artist, played by Graham, is shown sitting on a chair in the setting of an alternative cultural institution, with an audience watching him trying to hit a gong with potatoes. All the potatoes that actually hit the gong were subsequently used to produce vodka in a small still. The bottle is displayed in a showcase, both as an end product and part of the work. As in many of Graham's films, the relatively simple plot is in stark contrast to the effort that went into the production, with the artist conducting extensive research and hiring a professional film crew.