I met Eileen Rafferty of the OCA at Bristol Station and we took a taxi over to MShed in Bristol's dockland where the exhibition was being held. It is a collection of Martin Parr photographs all made in Bristol or roundabout and the 60 images on show more or less cover the range of Parr's career except for the earlier pre-1987 years before he moved to the area.
I was immediately struck by the quality of the photographs - large, well focused, sharp with a sophisticated sense of colour - Parr may be a post modernist photographer but this does not mean to say he can not deliver a technically proficient print even if it is the subject matter that draws one's interest.
The talk was given by the curator whose views I did not entirely agree with since there were times she seemed to reading into the images rather than from them. Hence, assumptions were made about the relationships between people in the photographs unless she actually had some definite knowledge that this was so. However, her guided tour of a small number of images did help to intensify one's view of what Parr's photography is about. Awkwardness of composition is one important characteristic of Parr's work which also plays on the need for vulnerability in photographs.
The first photo we were shown shows a young black man in conversation with two purse lipped white people in an image entitled Royal Commonwealth Society Evening; Britain in a post-colonial era. A carefully choreographed image and yet Parr can not have been telling his subjects where to stand rather he got himself into the right position. For the curator, this image is "almost unbearable" and yet I can not help feeling that this is an encouraging image since here are black and white as well as different generations facing each other albeit uncomfortably.
Parr's images are often carefully choreographed. His images display a comedy of manners. As a child, his parents took him birdwatching and it is perhaps from this time that he developed his power's of observation.
The second image we are shown is of a show house in Bath; we see the inside of a meticulously if not over designed bedroom. A car on the window sill is mirrored by a car standing outside the house. He is working as a documentary photographer but he is turning his lens inwards rather than outwards at the world as other more established documentary photographers had done. Someone suggests that Parr might have set up the cars to create the punctum of this image; this strikes me as unlikely although Parr does plan his photographs to some extent such as by asking subjects to attend a dinner.
This kind of domestic documentary was also being created by photographers of the time such as Brian Griffin and Meadows.
Another photograph is of a couple at a Garden Open Day. The curator says they are a married couple not communicating very well; this again strikes me as an assumption since they may not be related and her downward directed gaze may be nothing more than nervousness when faced by a photographer.
There is a lot of humour in Parr's photography but not all his images are amusing. He does seem to be a satirist though (and parallels have been drawn with the artist Hogarth.)
Another photograph is made on the beach at Weston-super-Mare where again the curator talks about the relationship of the two people in it as if she knew they were married. However, the significant point about this image is that it is a vertical crop where one might have expected a horizontal one.
Egglestone the U.S. photographer who pioneered the use of serious colour has been an influence on Parr. The photograph of a jar of prizewinning homemade lemon curd entitled Harvest Home - 1992 can be read as an example of this influence. This is the photo that Eileen chooses as her favourite since the gallery are asking people to each choose one image and the most popular image will be retained in an archive.
A photograph of cricketeers looking for a lost ball has a neo-romantic quality evident in the greens of the vegetation. One can see the underpants of one cricketeer, a sense of vulnerability.
Is Parr looking for the strange with his artificial colours and "hysterical" sense of composition?
The Badminton Horse Trails is an image that reveals a confusion of gazes and plays upon our sense of voyeurism. The subjects are mostly attractive young women but one looks accusingly at the viewer.
Another photograph is entitled St.Paul's Carnival - 2009 and shows a group of people both black and white, most of whom although close to each other are not communicating between themselves. It is an example again of Parr's interest in people looking, of voyeurism.
The "decisive moment" where the photographer captures a particular instance is evident in Parr's work although in many ways it could not be further from the work of Cartier-Bresson who coined that particular phrase.
One of the photographers who was against Martin Parr's entry to Magnum other than one of the agency's founders, Cartier-Bresson, was said to be Phillip Jones Griffiths who argued that since Parr was admired by Margaret Thatcher he could not be a worthy photographer. If Thatcher was actually aware of Parr's work then probably she would not like it; this was the curator's view which I find myself questioning since Mrs.T was obviously an intelligent woman who would be capable of understanding the work of someone like Parr rather than reacting to it.
M.Parr was influenced by American photography yet introduced his own way of making images in which he is expert - fill flash with a medium format camera has been part of his technique.
What though is the reason for Parr's success? A question worth answering and one that I can not immediately respond to.
He has built a massive and diverse collection of photographs covering the contemporary world. He is also a compulsive collector, a habit that is evident in some of his work.
Eileen and I discuss what is perhaps my favoutite image, Neighbours from Goldney Avenue, since I see subtle traces of flash of which she is not sure. Her favourite image is of a lemon curd jar that has won a local award.
Another image we both enjoy is entitled Airbus Factory 2008; as in other photographs by Parr, the horizontals are not aligned and while this may be disconcerting to some, it here adds to the visual effect. Another image like this is of the swimmers descending into the Bristol Channel, an image that reveals the sea horizon at an angle. I enjoy this kind of almost amateurish approach to photography in Parr's work; it might be considered post-modern as might other aspects of Parr's work such as his choice of subject matter and blurring of boundaries between art and documentary. I have however, never heard of him being described as a post-modernist photographer!
Another noteworthy image is Cribbs Causeway Shopping Centre 2002 which shows four women staring somewhat awkwardly at the camera. The women in the image are, we are told, four generations of the same family, great grandmother to great grandchild, which adds another dimension to this otherwise rather bleak image of a modern shopping centre on the outskirts of Bristol.
In his approach to street photography, Parr does not want people to smile at the camera but to look natural although many of his subjects do not look natural at all but exhibit discomfort perhaps because of the photographer yet also possibly because they suffer from a contemporary angst which colours their lives. An example of this is The Gymkhana photograph which reveals a small group of young rather well-to-do women, none of whom appear to be responding to each other while one looks somewhat ferociously at the camera.
There are also a couple of films that Parr made for the BBC showing in one corner of the gallery. One entitled "Think of England" is characteristic of Parr's approach to the country of his birth yet the other film, Vivian's Hotel, is a remarkably sensitive documentary of a woman dying told not through interviews with her and her family.
Critics such as Val Williams, curator of Parr's retrospective exhibition at the Barbican in London, describe Parr's work as discomforting. I think this is because he is telling the truth and for most people, that is too much to take on board. Perhaps he is being cruel but he is also being honest. What makes him so acceptable is perhaps the great Hogarthian sense of humour that pervades his work.
After seeing the exhibition, Eileen and I made two visits with lunch in-between, we went to the shop to buy the newspaper format catalogue of the exhibition; not expensive yet since it is a limited edition, it is set to become a collector's item. As we were making our purchases, I enquired about the Martin Parr talk that was due to be held in a couple of weeks time; unfortunately, it proved to be booked out. It was at this point that a voice behind me asked if he would like me to sign the catalogue for him; this was none other than Martin Parr himself. A wonderful coincidence!
I had done a workshop with Martin Parr over 20 years ago before he became so well known. At the time I knew nothing of photography as a medium yet after that workshop I had a much better understanding of the potentiality of photography which although requiring some degree of technical ability is really concerned with seeing the world and responding to that rather than merely recording it.
After this encounter, Eileen and I wandered off to make our way to the station by foot. Not far away, we came across some Morris dancers performing outside a pub. We stopped to make some images relecting that this was just the kind of subject that Martin Parr would like to cover; he would however make images that reflected something more than the apparent inconguity of the situation and give some insight into the psychological forces at work. The Morris Dancers of today are not eccentric yokels but rather contemporary citizens who like to dress up and have fun.
A link to a blog about Martin Parr's exhibition in Paris ...
http://www.noblahblah.org/?tag=martin-parr
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