Photography takes up more and more space in modern culture. Now almost everyone can afford to buy inexpensive equipment and, posting work on various Internet platforms, share their vision of the world with other people. Through the lenses of millions of cameras billions of images pass. And only a few of them, the most valuable, remain in history. Photographers, along with artists for centuries, preserve the realities of our lives. Many of them are captured in a rather sarcastic manner by contemporary British photographer Martin Parr.
Briefly about the biography
Martin was born in 1952 in the city of Epsom, UK. At the age of 14, he realized that he wanted to connect his life with photography, which was also facilitated by the identity of his father. At the age of 18, Martin entered the Manchester Polytechnic University, where he studied for 3 years. Two years later, begins teaching. At the same time, he acts as a professional photographer.
In 1980, Martin Parr marries Susan Mitchell. After 6 years, their daughter Ellen is born. Even then, he stood out among his colleagues in the matter in that he felt the advantages of a color image before the rest. Then his first independent projects were implemented, the first serious work was being created. In 1994, Martin joined Magnum Photos. Since 1997, he has been trying himself in other creative fields, such as camera work and directing. Dozens of exhibitions and projects later, in 2008, Martin became a doctor of arts at the university where he studied.
Creative activity
Despite the fact that Martin Parr began to engage in professional photography in the mid-1970s, world fame came to him only in 1986. The publication of his first photobook The Last Resort had the effect of an exploding bomb: criticism was extremely controversial. Some artists highly appreciated the work, while others highlighted excessively caustic satirical notes, seeing in it only anger and contempt for others. By the time the book was published, Martin had already worked at Magnum Photos for two years. At the moment, the photographer’s collection in this agency totals 25 thousand works.
In the late 1990s, Martin began to act as a director and cameraman - he oversaw several small television projects on British television. In 2006, he also released the low-budget film It is Nice up North. Since 2004, actively collaborates with world famous companies and firms. So, in 2007-2008, Martin Parr created advertising campaigns for Paul Smith and Louis Vuitton. In 2012, an exhibition of his works was held in Russia as part of the Photobiennale 2012 project. At the moment, the photographer has vast experience: the material shot was enough for 50 published photo books, and the number of exhibitions in which he took part reaches 80.
Style Features
Most of the works of Martin Parr are grotesque, sarcastic and in some ways bile. The reason for this is that Parr, unlike many photographers of our time, seeks to capture the plain and ugly sides of life. He is able to see something special in everyday, everyday, gray and boring, and then express something special in photography. How and what exactly Parr snatches from reality can even offend someone.
Of course, not everyone wants to look at unpleasant things, especially if you notice yourself or the surrounding reality in them. However, as the photographer himself assures, rarely is anyone offended by him. As a “true British,” he says that his nation tends not only to satirically ridicule his surroundings, but also to notice hypocrisy and ugliness within himself. Most likely, that self-irony, from the position of which Martin looks at himself and his work, puts him somewhat higher than other acrid representatives of the photo business.
All the satire of Martin Parra is certainly provocative, but at the same time, British restrained. The author loves to make fun of the phenomenon of replication associated with the era of mass society. Mindless consumption, copying, and the facelessness of modern man and bourgeois society as a whole are precisely those topics that Parr prefers to raise in his writings.
The most remarkable works
For almost half a century of his career, the British photographer took so many pictures that they were enough for fifty different photo books. And this despite the fact that only 1-2% of all photos taken are not sent to junk.
The most famous photos of Martin Parr are part of his first work, The Last Resort, which made the author world famous. It displayed a familiar at first glance beach holiday. It is, however, it is served under the sauce of the phenomenon of mass, facelessness, causing the viewer a sense of disgust.
Parr often condemns the phenomenon of stamping in his photographs, moments in which nothing original is closely observed. As, for example, photoshoots of tourists near the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The photographer also has such works that may just seem strange at first glance, but at the same time bright. Like, for example, a picture of chess players in thermal waters in Budapest.
General conclusion
Martin Parr is currently one of the most famous British photographers. Almost 50 years of career have been translated into dozens of projects and exhibitions, tens of thousands of photographs. This author is distinguished by a purely British view of the world. He is a little cynical, cruel, but also very restrained, extremely sarcastic and is aimed at ridiculing those vices and weaknesses, negative aspects that prevail in modern society. Parr in his works for the most part opposes the stereotyped and stereotypical thinking, against the faceless consumer society and mass society.