BIOGRAPHY
Born in London, 1956. Studied at Stanley Technical High School until age 16, after which Graham joined society photographer, Lenare, for a period between 1972-1977. It was here that Graham learned the basics of photography - composition, lighting, exposure, film and print processing, etc - before becoming involved in cycling whilst riding 20-kilometres into London and back each day. Following a weekend trip to the 1977 Tour de France in Paris, Graham won a small photographer's competition organized by the British 'Cycling Weekly' magazine and his career as a cycling photographer was launched. During a year or so photographing British-based races, Graham still traveled to Europe to photograph the Tour de France, but also Classics like the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix - which he first saw after cycling to and from the channel port of Calais in 1980, a day's mileage of over 200-kilometres.

By the mid-1980's, Graham's clientele had grown to include magazines in USA, Japan, Germany and Australia, and especially Spain, where he was the founding photographer for Ciclismo a Fondo, a magazine for whom he still works today, almost 20 years later. His clients reflected the nationalities of the top racers back then - Pedro Delgado, Sean Kelly, Robert Millar, Paul Sherwen, Phil Anderson and Greg LeMond - a factor that Graham's readily acknowledges has helped his career. The domination by these racers, and the interest from his new clients, helped Graham break into the Continental 'clique' of cycling photographers, to the point where he was a regular on the circuit by 1987, the year when he first followed the Tour de France by motorbike and watched Stephen Roche win a superbly contested race.

Graham is now established beyond the reputations of any one cyclist or nation of cyclists, and his clients include the UCI (the sport's governing body), Bicycling Australia, Cycle Sport USA, Ciclismo a Fondo, Livre d'Or du Cyclisme, Velomania.mag, 'RIDE Cycling review', Velo News, as well as a host of web-sites. Graham is also engaged by many leading teams to provide their photography - Cofidis, Discovery, Liberty Seguros, Saunier-Duval as well as many industry manufacturers like Trek and Shimano. Like many of his colleagues, Graham has his own web-site in www.grahamwatson.com, and readers can enjoy same-day race-coverage from over 160 days' racing a year. It is by far the most popular 'non-news'-based site in cycling.

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Bibliography: Graham has authored or co-authored over 20 books, including 'Kings of the Road' (1986), 'Visions of Cycling' (1998), 'The Tour de France and its Heroes' (1989), 'The Road to Hell' (1990), 'The Great Tours' (1994), and '20 Years of Cycling' (2000). His images appear each year in annuals like 'Livre d'Or du Cyclisme' (France), 'The Cycling Annual' (South Africa), 'Ciclismo 2004' (Italy/USA) and 'SportSwiss' (Switzerland). He has been the exclusive photographer with Stephen Roche's 'My Road to Victory' (1987) and Miguel Indurain's 'Corazón de Ciclista' (1993). His most recent titles are 'Images of a Champion', a coffee-table photo-book co-authored with six-times Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong (2004). And 'Landscapes of Cycling', a 200-page, 250-image masterpiece devoted to scenic photography.

Exhibits: Graham's work has been exhibited all over the world, most notably in Dublin in 1998: 'Eyes on the Tour de France' and in Austin's International Airport: 'Eyes on the Tour de France'. An abbreviated version of this same exhibit appears each year in London, at the London Business Design Centre in September.