Postmodernism and Martin Parr Saturday October 21, 2006
I didn’t realise Martin Parr, Magnum photographer and well known producer of photo books, did a Swiss Alps series some years ago. Not only that but a few of his shots were taken at a place I’ve recently visited, where I obtained similar images, but also different images. It makes an interesting comparison, and an interesting exercise to consider the thinking that lies behind them.
It’s my understanding that Parr’s most famous for his images of working class seaside scenes. I’m not sure but it may have been the defining moment in his career; certainly, he is famous for his portrayal of kitsch, squalor, and tacky moments resplendent with chips, litter, scruffy clothes and cheap fun. My first reaction many years ago, on seeing those and similar photographs, was this guy is taking the piss. They are deliberate snapshots, devoid of artistry, with over saturated colours and a deliberate lack of meaning. It’s what the working class do, he implied; a large part of British society lives like this. I’ve previously considered this in relation to a rife post-Marxism that’s both fashionable and prevalent in academia and photographic discourse, suggesting that it’s a useful counterpoint to naive dialectical idealism: there’s nothing inherently or necessarily noble about the working class, and maybe if Marx were to see Parr’s photography, he would revise his polemic. Its not an automatic badge of honour. Chav living appears to be filling up this strata of society, defined not so much by economic disadvantage and resilient community spirit, as a conformity to tribal sports clothing and obnoxious ASBO attitude. Parr’s seaside images arguably suggest this in his book called The Last Resort, challenging mythological notions of a noble oppressed.
In his book called Small World you find a further challenge to another mythological notion: except it’s not quite as it appears. You find images from Egypt, Italy, India….and the Swiss Alps. This one in particular is thematically very similar to one of mine:
Here’s mine; it’s the same mountains in the background:
I was also interested in this juxtaposition of easy tourism and awesome natural beauty. The fact is it’s an easy train ride to arrive at this small area called Kleine Scheidegg, from which impressive and iconic mountains can be enjoyed: including the Eiger, one of the most famous mountains in the world. The other side of those peaks, it’s mountaineering country few people get to see – albeit, that an impressive train ride gives you limited access. Parr’s message is essentially this: tourism is like this. We consume sights, seek easy views, and have a casual and non-engaged relationship to mere passing scenery, regardless of its grandeur. Indeed, society is like this; we construct cultural perceptions, which define our responses, and currently live in a world where the Romanticism of the past is deconstructed like redundant religion. It’s an interesting set of ideas consistent with postmodernism, and a knowing repudiation of artificial meaning. The Eiger, identifiable on the left of my photograph, or even Everest, are superficial amusements defined and subjected to consumerism. These ideas, pursued by Martin Parr, were consistent with some of the criticism of Susan Sontag which probably accounts for some of his success. Photography, she said, is a process of consumption conducted with a shutter-click acquisition. It’s a mode of cultural colonialism where the photo embodies a proof of being there, and carrying a camera endows a trip with a direction and a meaning it otherwise lacks when you are adrift in a foreign place, divorced from your normal reference points.
However, Parr’s work is not so clever-dick as it might appear. I have no idea what kind of day he was having, where he was staying, what he was doing, and how he was feeling about his trip to the Alps. If he was so totally blasé and bored, he presumably wouldn’t have made the effort to get to Switzerland. My photos were taken in an entirely different spirit and while I made a passing acknowledgement of estranged tourism, it was neither the purpose nor the meaning of my trip. It was thus that I arrived at Kleine Scheidegg after walking for several hours, as a momentary pause before setting off again. Beyond Kleine Scheidegg, my route became considerably more rough, wild and solitary: the qualities I enjoy in walking, allowing me an immersion into nature and a forgetting of normal cares. Parr, by contrast, had taken his thinking, calculating, imposing mind with him, and took photographs demonstrating banality and meaningless. Guy Debord said we live in a society of spectacle, and Parr implied it never stops: even in the heart of the Swiss Alps, one of the most spectacular places in Europe.
Parr’s approach is a game, an intellectual contrivance, and there’s a kind of arrogance within it whereby a personal attitude is made into a right-on universality. Parr should try attempting a testing wilderness trek some time, to see what value and usefulness his intellectual constructions have. See if the mountains either care or recognise his dismissal of their immensity; see if his contrived failure to engage makes any sense, when he contends with navigation, food and water, as necessary components of survival when traversing a wilderness. Quite possibly the people in his photograph were blasé tourists, seeking a consumerist souvenir for a consumerist holiday. It’s also possible however, they were walkers like myself, maybe even mountaineers or climbers, and that moment was thus an unrepresentative account.
Parr photographed this:
I photographed this:
This is what I enjoy, what I was seeking, and shows the beauty of the Swiss Alps:
Parr suggests it’s all like this:
Parr found this interesting:
I preferred this, depicting the same mountain ridge, obtained by wandering around the area contrary to the warning signs advising otherwise. Parr must have stayed on the tourist path crossing the flat plains of snow; I was tired of the tourists and wanted a walking experience, solitary and wild, not a touristic one:
I realise my compositions are similarly ‘artificial’ in the sense that they are carefully selected from the Alpine scenery, but it’s a different process. It expresses an appreciation of the environment, and its real life ecological, geological and aesthetic power. It’s a different ‘artificiality’, responding to the innate qualities of the terrain. You can’t see any chip paper or seaside postcards at Alpine moments like this, showing the peak to the right of the above photo, the mountain called Monch. Apparently it’s not too difficult to walk up here, although it requires the use of a rope in addition to full winter equipment:
I’m not suggesting Parr’s project was uninteresting; I realise it provokes thought, and that is partly the reason for doing it. However, I don’t agree it’s as clever as it’s fashionably conceived to be, nor has any ‘insight’ of any great value. It shows artifice, with a process of solipsistic artificiality. It’s a kind of intellectual hubris embedded in a sympathetic photographic culture, similar to the recent trend for unmade beds and dead sharks.
This account of Parr’s entrance into Magnum membership is inconclusive but revealing. As one photographer notes His photographs titillate in some way, but the fact is that they are meaningless.
What I would add to that is what this meaningless-ness consists of. They subvert and disrupt conventions, that being the rationale of his work, which is equally artificial in the sense that it is itself an ideological position or construction. The comparison then, between Parr and other photographers, concerns the ideology of ridicule and what value you think that has.
More of my Swiss Alps photos can be seen here
As I appreciate your overview of Parr’s stance on the Alp’s vs. yours, I feel you are missing the genius behind his gift. I have come to appreciate his incredible knack for capturing the very existance of the unsophisticated human race intertwined with the beauty and complexity of this Earth. For example, I found his photo of the bald man against the mountain peaks brilliant and absolutely hilarious. I really feel that Parr is a rare and extreme realist who is not afraid to expose society as it truly exists amoung it’s environment. I have an appreicition for your works as well, but it takes a certain creative and off-the-wall mind to capture many of the complex controversies he has. This, to me, is true art.
— andrea · Nov 14, 02:58 AM · §
Hi, thanks for the comment.
I agree about the humour – quite fun. And its true that his juxtapositions are interesting, undermining and subverting preconceived ideas most people have. I’ll say some more later…in a bit of a rush now….
— James · Nov 14, 08:26 PM · §
OK, back again.
Essentially, I think what you’re doing is introducing ideas and even feelings, that don’t necessarily contradict what I said. My argument is not so much a wholesale rejection of Parr, as an evaluation of his work in two contexts: first, the fashionable ideas of postmodernism, which his work exemplifies perfectly. Second, the undeniable aesthetic power of standing beneath some of the most famous and awesome mountains in the world. I find it both contrived and maybe a little arrogant to suggest that’s just another tourist adventure, like watching TV, consistent with the thesis of French theorist Jean Baudillard: the simulation, he said, is the only ‘real thing’ we have. Nonsense; it is not. That’s an indulgent intellectual position, built on a fundamentally flawed philosophy constructed as an aesthetic rhetoric on the assumption that constructing it makes it so. In other words, the construction of the (his) argument becomes its rationale and proof. Which itself rests on a naive over-evaluation of the powers of the thought-construction process. It may not be fashionable these days to consider this, but ‘deconstruction’ should logically extend to a ‘deconstruction of deconstruction’: that is, to a consideration of its own meaning-generating process and what basis it has. It’s a game, basically; Jean Baudrillard’s ideas were a game, and so is the work of Martin Parr (some of it). That’s fine in itself, but it’s not a foundation for a coherent philosophical position with a wider application beyond its own self-defining terms.
It’s an interesting exercise to compare Parr’s Alps photos to mine, because what mine do is expose and highlight the thinking process behind his images, and how they fail to either appreciate or respect the experience of witnessing one of the most awesome examples of nature. Thus he remained (I think) on a safe tourist path, and shot a photo of a bald-headed tourist. Fine. However what he could have done is wander away from that path as I did and discover a different experience – wild, silent, timeless, vast – prompting a different kind of image, responding to nature rather than imposing oneself onto it with a quirky postmodern agenda.
My own position is more ‘existential’: for example, when I wandered over the snows, I approached a snow ridge I could not evaluate and decided it was not safe to explore. It could have been a massive snow bank, into which I would sink, and then slip down the other side which I could not possibly have survived. 14000 feet is very high! It looked a good photo vantage point, but I retreated from it when I was about 20 feet away. In some respects that, for me, shows the essence of my mountain photography: a humble appreciation of an awesome environment, and my attempt to depict this relationship and the beauty and power it has.
— James · Nov 17, 12:43 PM · §
My ‘existential’ position counters the self-referential fiction-making, as an end in itself:
“Using the term ‘fiction’ (is) something close to Frank Kermode’s usage to mean representations which, as opposed to myth, accept their own fictionality, which requires the assent of their public rather than its belief, which are experiments on reality and expressive of modern, post-symbolic cultures, mass tourism…happily based in fictions. The enjoyment of a mass tourist sight such as Blackpool Tower, Benidorm’s Aqualandia, any Disneyland, is not critically dependent on it having any meaning outside the tourist system. Tourists use the photographic images of tourism,, including their own photographs, as both proofs, records and mementos of tourist actualities while accepting these same actualities as set-up performances, idealisations or romanticisations – fictions. Photography uses actuality – a view, a national type – to produce fictions for tourism; tourism uses these fictions to produce its own actualities which lie beyond truth and representation”
Osborne, Peter 2000: Travelling Light: Photography, Travel and Visual Culture, page 77
— James · Nov 20, 06:51 PM · §
Further ideas from the above book:
“The sublime experience was a radically intensified state of mind and emotion brought about by certain objects and events located beyond the borders of the familiar. Stood before them, the perceiver’s psyche would be stretched beyond its habitual bounds by a sense of awe and a feeling of estrangement. ‘Terror’ was the emotion identified by both Kant and Edmund Burke as the sublime’s key sentiment….the sublime, with its experiences of self-displacement, extreme fear or pleasure which shocked the individual out of his or her own familiar selfhood might, it was thought, be capable of bringing about self-knowledge and enhancement” 29
That is a reasonable, coherent, and intelligent psychological understanding. While we may no longer refer to it as the ‘sublime’, and reject what we regard as a former intellectual naivete, that in itself doesn’t mean such an aesthetic/phenomenological experience is unreal or impossible.
“There is no beyond that travel can take us to and there is no higher order of experience or material form that aesthetic practice can offer or separate cultural space in which it can dominate”: 190.
This is a Baudrillardian theme; the image has merged with reality and is now all that exists – the simulacrum. This is exactly what Parr was doing/illustrating with his Alpine photogaphs.
— James · Nov 21, 01:33 AM · §
Ive recently read your article, and have decided to base my final chapter of my dissertation around your ideas and theories. The title is perspectives of consumption through the lense of Martin Parr. Do you think that Parr is a exaggerator or do you think that he makes consumption easier to see? I can understand points made within your article but do you think that you are both unalike due to looking at the subject from different perspectives? yours being modernist and his postmodernist?
— hayley wright · Jan 13, 01:29 PM · §
“Perspectives of consumption through the lens of Martin Parr”
Interesting.
I think this is both a complex and a highly sophisticated subject, that I seek to address with a corresponding sophistication. First, you have a set of famously quirky pictures subverting mythical notions of ‘landscape’. This partly rests on a contemporary political awareness, where the arguably naive photos of former decades expressed questionable social values. It was a myth, a kind of Marxist “false consciousness” which we now deconstruct with politics. And aesthetically, you could argue that even the notions of ‘wilderness’, ‘mountain’ and ‘landscape’ are nothing more than arbitrary categories existing more as concept than reality. That kind of discourse is currently regarded as the ‘cutting edge’ stuff of academia – and not without reason.
Thus, second, and intrinsically related to the photographs, you have a set of postmodernist ideas which have to be addressed as much as the ‘art’ of the photography. We see the same thing with contemporary art exemplified by Turner Prize winners, whereby the apparent non-artistry is justified with reference to what is essentially postmodernism. As with art, so with photography: it’s concept driven, and to some extent makes no sense and has no value without this intellectual context. Which is why I criticise postmodernist attitudes alongside the photography: if you say X, Y or Z artefact is accomplished and interesting because of A, B, or C ideas, then ABC also has to be scrutinised. Which rarely happens – what you will typically see is the artist responsible for the artefact cites the ABC ideas to justify themselves, so to criticise their work you have to also criticise ABC: postmodernism. There is, in other words, no reason to swoon over the ideas and accept them as important or valid, and mountain photography is a particularly good area to undertake this exercise.
I don’t know what Parr thinks about all of this, because it’s characteristic of photographers that they either can’t or won’t engage at that kind of level for several reasons, one of which is that it’s undermining their own work! So I don’t know if he thought he was ‘exaggerating’ or ‘depicting’. I myself would probably say it was neither: he just focussed on the subject, in the same way as any other photographic theme. Photo critic John Szarkowski once referred to ‘taking a thing out of context’ as a defining characteristic of photography, whereby you isolate something from the context where it has its habitual or expected meaning, and re-present it for an alternate perusal. In that respect, you could argue that Parr is quintessentially photographic, in the sense that he expresses and embodies the medium according to its inhernet quality. That is, he doesn’t try to imitate the attitudes and methods of painting, which is what the early proponents of photography did.
I suspect that Parr wouldn’t make any kind of ‘stand’ with regard to his work; I suspect he would say he was merely being ‘photographic’ in the above sense, and it’s not his job or concern to hold any ideological position. Certainly, he didn’t invent the ideas he expresses – he derives them from an intellectual fashion tracing back a few decades and it would be interesting to consider, for example, a topic like “Martin Parr And Quentin Tarantino: Why Their Art Is Identical”. On that postmodernist point, there’s a book called ‘Trash Aesthetics’ which you may find useful. The title is self explanatory, it’s relevant to Parr, even more so with his seaside working class work.
My own position, Hayley, is to undertake a thorough questioning of both the image and the ideas on which it rests. So while it’s possible to say in one respect my photography is ‘modernist’ (for my Alps work anyway – it’s not the only thing I do!), it’s a kind of yes-and-no situation where actually, my ideas are neither one nor the other: what I’m doing is presenting a phenomenological thesis which appears as ‘modernism’ in the photography but is actually grounded, in this instance, in the physical and psychological experience of a mountain. Thus, from my position I would say that Parr simply doesn’t understand this, and his tourist experience at Kleine Scheidegg was a deliberate choice, but not a necessary choice.
That then leads me into my ideas about wilderness, psychology, and how I pursue that in my photography, which is a theme scattered in my writings but partly expressed here:
http://www.jameslomax.com/words/809/metaphors-we-live-by-mountain-photography
E mail me your work, if you like, and I’ll have a look at it.
— James · Jan 14, 12:40 AM · §
The beginning of Trash Aesthetics:
— James · Jan 28, 06:42 PM · §
I’m researching postmodernism to finalize the concept in my head before commencing a photographic project.
I hope to adopt a photojournalistic style capturing nudes, and which blurs distinctions between genres. An emphasis on pastiche, comsumer capitalism. My execution will focus upon aesthetic playfulness.
If there is any suggestions that you can offer me I would be delighted to read them.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Take care.
Martin
— Martin Billings · Nov 17, 04:25 PM · §
Hi Martin, I’m not sure what you’re inviting me to respond to, exactly?
It’s certainly an interesting idea, taking the ideas of postmodernism and using them to conceptualise and structure nude photography – though not unique, I would say, in the sense that it’s been done before. Interestingly, I think there’s also a link between landscape and nude, both of which are traditionally based on classical aeshetics and ideas about beauty. Parr wasn’t pursuing beauty, and recently in the Guardian wrote that tourist photography is essentially propaganda: a good summary, I think, for what his work is all about. So he went to the Alps and took snaps of queues of people, tourists buying souvenirs etc, illustrating that point. I wouldn’t describe my work as ‘tourist’, and that’s an important point because I think in the world of Martin Parr he perhaps would – maybe a sub-set of glossy brochure pictures, presented differently (ideally in high quality print) but showing similar premises of aesthetic appreciation.
But here’s the thing: Parr took his own ideas to the Alps and everywhere else no differently to me, Ansel Adams, or anyone else. He just showed different ideas; not such a big deal. Which then brings in questions about what you do with your photography, where you show it, and who is your audience. In other words, what context it has.
I’m not sure what your intentions are (commercial? academic? art?), though in regard to postmodernist subversion or re-interpretation of the nude, I think similar points apply as with landscape: questioning assumed ideas about beauty and its classical traditions, with further issues around bodily and personal, possibly sexual self-image and how that intersects with social norms and expectations.
— James Lomax · Nov 22, 02:47 PM · §
Parr’s New Brighton work was pleasing to the eye but mostly dull, shallow, controversial and a little offensive.
If this is Martin’s best work, then it is not a surprise that Magnum didn’t accept him with open arms.
I think the other interesting point is Martin’s position inside Magnum. From what I could make out in a recent hour long interview, his position is now more of a “spokes person” for Magnum than a “photographer”, which will be no surprise to some.
— Simon · Jan 23, 10:06 AM · §
A colleague recently told me Simon that apparently, Liverpool folk liked his work and it was only when it was shifted down to London that people started to slag it off as being offensive. In other words it was the (supposed) cultural elite that objected to it, not the people it actually featured.
I don’t have a view on that point, ie. who specifically is looking at it and how judgements vary accordingly, but it’s a point in itself I find interesting.
— James Lomax · Jan 23, 09:25 PM · §
Thank you for a very illuminating and fascinating discussion.
It places the meaning of Martin Parr’s pictures in a critical light, which let’s face it – most viewers do not engage in (generally due to a lack of time, or a care to delve deeper than the vernacular meaning). In reality, these photographs do very little except provide a subjective illustration or designed representation, and often just a caricature of a scene, person, or object. In other words, we see what Martin Parr feels is relevant to us from his aesthetically biased standpoint. Like most successful photographers, he knows what makes a well-balanced and attractive image that appeals to a mass audience.
In a way I find the most appealing of his pictures, the more obscure, and perhaps, sincere pictures – the ones which appeal to me on the basis of what I get out of them, not what I am supposed to get out of them on the basis of Martin Parr’s logic (or any sycophantic admirer).
It’s a difficult scenario – one that I believe Martin intentionally makes difficult, because he is a great photographer, but also a terrible manipulator of the ‘exact’ meaning of an image’s relevance to the viewer. He speaks readily and often of his motivations, but I am so rarely convinced by what he says. It seems he wants so badly to be more than just a photographer, that he comes up with half-truths, which when scrutinized simply do not make sense and often contradict the original premise. I almost wish Martin would stick to just being a good photographer and not try to offer critical analysis of his own work – he should leave that to people who buy his books or pay to see his exhibitions – in the spirit of consumerism, after all, they are the ones who have the most to offer in way of explaining Martin’s appeal.
— David Axelbank · Mar 28, 12:59 AM · §
Hi David
Yes, I think that sums it up nicely. I don’t think I object to Parr’s work per se, but I do think there’s an underlying, implicit discourse presented at the same time that needs some scrutiny. He literally used the word “propaganda” in an article he wrote for the Guardian a few months ago, re. tourism photography, and actually the same point applies to him. Further, the same point applies to him with regard to his underlying financial interests! I think I’m right in saying, that Parr is loaded: that his photo book collection is extremely valuable.
Yes. He knows how to compose etc, and over the years he’s tapped into a “mass audience” which in reality means a commercial concern.
He’s got a ‘Parr style’, a trademark aesthetic, which is photographically valuable: Susan Sontag once said this is essential for photographic success. Example: a few months ago he did a photo shot for a women’s magazine. I happened to see it in a dentist’s waiting room! What was it like? – typical Parr. Kitsch juxtapositions at some kind of posh, dog show exhibition like a woman wearing a stripy dress, standing next to a stripy dog. Another woman with big blonde hair, holding onto a dog with a similar appearance, etc.
Not a new idea, either photographically or conceptually, but Parr was hired to do it using his expected aesthetics. And they were models, incidentally; it was a planned photo shoot.
I think Parr makes an interesting study for academia, with regard to the aesthetic of photography such as it is…so I noted above, one could argue he’s a quintessential Photographer when we see him taking something out of context and re-presenting it according to his design. He did that in the Alps for example, which is actually contrary to his claim that he photographs the life that he experiences, as it is: a remark he made on the recent Genius Of Photography BBC series. No, with regard to the Alps what he did was carefully edit his shots to avoid the natural beauty and focus instead on souvenir hunting etc. – whereas I largely did the opposite.
Someone said above they like his humour and yes, there’s certainly that; in some of his work he’s clearly having a laugh. That’s quite interesting, if you compare it with the gravity and seriousness of much of Magnum work: war, politics, etc – so what we have is a contrast between tragedy and comedy and that’s not a bad thing, when photography usually gravitates towards the former.
— James Lomax · Mar 28, 12:22 PM · §
Although, I haven’t read the Guardian piece you mention, I have heard Martin Parr use the word propaganda to describe the majority of photography produced in our age. All but his own, it would seem!
I have to be honest; I am at a complete loss to understand the logic behind his use of this word. I’m not sure he really understands what he is suggesting. The word propaganda is ultimately a derogatory term, which describes the use of information (or images) that is purposely misleading, to promote or publicize a particular point of view or political cause.
Used in the widest sense, as Martin Parr has been doing as of late, it doesn’t apply to photography, most of which is generally benign in its motivation and purpose (a family album, Martin Parr points out, is an example of propaganda). Is it really?! Or does that just sound catchy in front of an impressionable audience?
According to Martin Parr, Flickr is another example – an endless sea of ‘propaganda’. As is with photography, which doesn’t fit the rigid terms of originality as, laid out by Martin. He points out that photographers who visit circuses or carnivals are also committing the act of producing pure propaganda. Simply because other photographers have done it so well in the past. Well, isn’t that simply a case of narrow, elitist thinking to suggest that no one will ever contribute anything else meaningful on the subject? Does it not also suggest that circuses or carnival, as human experiences, will cease to entertain, let alone evolve to mirror the society upon which they are based? People who discover photography and have a desire to experiment with their newfound medium, in whatever way helps them to develop their craft and approach to subject matter, are not guilty of producing propaganda!
On the contrary, Martin Parr’s work can be described as propaganda, virtually every bit of it. From his social documentary work to his travel photography (already discussed) to his commercial photography for high-end luxury goods manufacturers, it is all propaganda. Propaganda that reflects his upper-class British sensibilities, and his views of modern society and politics.
Once again, it is an argument that Martin Parr seems to intentionally make difficult, because by doing so its credits him with sparking a level of controversy, despite the fact that the controversy is based upon a malapropism.
— David Axelbank · Mar 30, 11:51 AM · §
Hmm well if what you say is correct, and I’m sure it is, the Parr Project would seem to be on even shakier ground. If he’s in the habit of deriding mass or mainstream photography as ‘propaganda’, he would have to explain and justify his own work in regard to why it’s different.
Indeed, if this fact dominates his ideas it suggests he regards himself
as some kind of revealer of truth – a point I found interesting to debunk and challenge with his Alps work, because I was there at the same place and photographed something very different on a subject I love: mountains and the natural environment. I think it’s a particularly good subject on which to challenge him. I’m not so naive to think my mountain photography is “propaganda” free ie. it doesn’t have an element of artifice, but equally I know there are certain kinds of experience one can have in mountain walking where you are immersed in nature and its immensity, and portraying that in a photograph is entirely legitimate. Its not propaganda – I think shots of souvenir shoppers at Kleine Scheidegg is more like “propaganda”.
A photographer once said to me – Pieter Vanderhouwen
http://www.pietervanderhouwen.nl – that people don’t like Parr because he doesn’t respect his subjects. I wonder, really, what he was doing wandering about Kleine Scheidegg and the Junfraujoch, taking pictures of queues of people and the back of a man’s bald head, in the middle of undeniably awesome scenery:
Here
Here
Was he enjoying his holiday?
Was he enjoying his ridicule of his fellow tourists?
I really don’t know, but I do know an environment such as the Alps has a ‘meaning’ beyond mass tourism.
I can somewhat understand his New Brighton work, showing the scruffy facts about working class seaside resorts, and to some extent even his ridicule of the upper classes. But I think if he suggests all his work is some kind of anti propaganda truth that’s really going too far. As you say, thousands of people enjoy Flickr and it’s really nothing to do with “propaganda”. I also wonder about his thoughts on the fact that the recent Channel 4 photography series Picture This, in which he was a judge, had a carefully arranged link-up with Flickr.
— James Lomax · Mar 31, 01:46 AM · §
Interesting interview with Parr here
http://www.lensculture.com/parr_interview.html
— James Lomax · Apr 4, 12:37 PM · §
Interviewed by the BBC here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/art/people/martin_parr.shtml
— James Lomax · Apr 4, 12:42 PM · §
Martin Parr took some of these photo’s with people unaware and took one of a jackdaw
— Ryan Thompson · Jan 13, 08:34 PM · §
I’m starting to change my views on Parr actually; I wrote this piece over two years ago.
I bought a first edition copy of Small World about a month ago, that I found in a secondhand bookshop. It’s very collectible, and quite valuable.
The photos are fun, amusing, and interesting. In some respects I still object to his work, but that’s more about the seriousness, “respect” and indeed money it makes for him. Parr is loaded.
In another respect, it’s very refreshing to see someone constantly subverting and undermining conventional subjects; though I find his treatment of mountain landscape quite annoying because its not so much a subversion as a misrepresentation, or at best a lazy tourist approach which is not (for me) what mountains are about.
Apart from that though, he’s what Carl Jung called a “trickster”: someone who conveys a message through the medium of comedy. And I like that, when it is anti-political, anti-convention, and anti-nonsense. Not in an adolescent yah! boo! way, but actually in quite a perceptive way.
— James Lomax · Jan 14, 02:51 PM · §