Martin Parr- visiting the exhibition in Bristol - september 24'th

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

POSTMODERN exhibition at the V+A

review on Front Row 22.9.2011

Post-Modernism

Known as "pomo" also "nono"

Some visitors will arrive feeling hostile towards subject

Exhibition a difficult remit

Chairs you can not sit in

Building without doors

2,000 year old Ming vase with Coca Cola on it

post-modernism the death of modernism … !?

not about cynicism

could be seen as expansive and radically optimistic

good fun, not a great deal to say for itself

opposite of killing a butterfly with a hammer

lot left out of exhibition …

covers of music albums

what was the fatal blow to pomo … its’ not dead!!

More diffused now

Paper architecture; "Marginally functional" paper chairs!

Have been invited to an opening at Magnum in London of the following exhibition ... it is interesting to reflect on the way photographs made sometime ago may now be read in a different way! The following from the Magnum website seems worth reading.

The Black Chronicles

Autograph ABP’s and Magnum’s objective is not to establish a prescribed way in which to read the presence of black people in photographic archives. Rather, it is to open critical enquiries into the archive to extract content not just by offering a reading of the aesthetic qualities contained within a photograph, but to examine ideological conditions in which photographs were produced and the purpose they serve as agents of communication.

This exhibition brings together the work of four different photographers, who have brought the black subject into focus through their work as longstanding Magnum members. It is therefore an invitation to unpick the authority the archive generates. This exhibition marks a modest beginning of an open enquiry that operates across many photographic archival stories in which the black subject is classified and fixed.

Wayne Miller was one of the first Western photographers to document the destruction of Hiroshima. He had just returned from World War II working as a Navy photographer when he received two Guggenheim fellowships to fund an in-depth documentation of African-American life on Chicago’s Southside. The project, started in 1946 and spanning three years, captures both the cultural renaissance and the grim economic realities faced by the city’s largest black community in the immediate post-war era. Miller’s evocative black and white images provide a visual history of Chicago at the height of its industrial peak when the stockyards, steel mills and factories were booming. More significantly they capture intimate moments in the daily lives of ordinary people; factory workers, churchgoers, families and courting couples.

One of Magnum’s founding fathers, British photographer George Rodger produced a series of portraits charting the arrival of Afro-Caribbean migrant families at London’s Waterloo station in 1964, photographed as part of a wider project entitled Impressions of Britain. Photographs of smartly dressed families are displayed alongside Rodger’s original, hand marked contact sheet.

Following his powerful portrayal of South Africa under apartheid, Ian Berry spent a significant period during the 60s and 70s photographing England as part of the first Arts Council Photography Bursary. His photographs of multicultural and black communities include several photographs that reveal an increasingly diverse British society, for example, two black male nurses tending to an elderly white gentleman and a dancing interracial couple, seemingly caught off guard by Berry’s lens.

Chris Steele-Perkins’ portfolio includes intimate portraits in 1970s Brixton; families dressed in their church finery, schoolboys toying with the latest stereo technology, and a documentary series on Wolverhampton’s dancehall and disco club scene in 1978.

‘Curators in most instances simply replicate and maintain the power structures inherent in the archive. This process signifies an enquiry into what is clearly unfinished representational business, as we look further into the world’s image banks. The challenge is to avoid the trap of definitive story telling and to present photographs that enable reinterpretive moments, meanings and references to surface from within the archive. References that generate either real orn imagined experiences that enter the diverse fields of perception that viewing these historical photographs may trigger’. Mark Sealy, Director, Autograph ABP

‘Clearly archives are not neutral: they embody the power inherent in accumulation, collection, and hoarding as well as that power inherent in the command of lexicon and rules of language. Within bourgeois culture, the photographic project itself has been identified from the very beginning not only with the dream of a universal language but also with the establishment of global archives and repositories according to models offered by libraries, encyclopedia, zoological and botanical gardens, museums, police files and banks.’ - Allan Sekula

POSTMODERNISM

With a view to the OCA outing to the V+A later next month, I thought I would find out a bit more about this subject. Other than knowing that it followed modernism, I realised I knew nothing about what it actually is.

Started by downloading a sample of A Very Short Introduction to Post Modernism by Christopher Butler onto my Kindle; soon after, sitting in a cafe in Delhi, I was able to buy the whole book since the introductory pages were quite informative and not too hard to read. Postmodernism is found in the writings of French intellectuals such as Derrida and Barthes also Foucault as well as Edward Said. It is not really a philosophy and has no doctrine, postmodernism being deconstructivist in nature; it is allied with Poststructuralism.

Modernism characterised by the Bauhaus School of Art that grew up in Germany between the wars, was concerned with making the new industrial world a place that could be beautifully created rather than merely utilitarian. A "Brave New World" in fact. Postmodernism however does not have such lofty aims and might be considered as being cynical or at least leading to a general nihilistic view of life.

One can not however deny its intelligence as it challenges so many formerly accepted modes of thought. For instance, history comes under the spotlight and is here generally understood to be closer to fiction than fact. History is written by people who never have all the facts and probably approach it from their own viewpoint often conditioned by the political viewpoint of the country they live in. The same can be said of literary criticism where someone may be writing about a novel from a Freudian perspective. Text is seen as something that can be read or understood in many different ways which lead Barthes to announce "The death of the author". One might ask, "had he/she ever been alive?"

There is something very healthy in the way postmodernism challenges our assumptions but does it have anything to offer to compensate for that, to help one see the world anew rather than dismiss it. Largely the postmodernism view has been propounded by intellectuals and yet it has not been fully aware of former theories such as those of Wittgenstein which in many ways anticipated postmodernism. One of Wittgenstein's maxims was "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."


Postmodernism challenges the nature of language as one might expect. A word is not the same as the thing it represents even in the case of alliteration. There is much written on this subject and it is not really possible to go into it here except to say that not all postmodern arguments are generally accepted; this is also the case with the postmodern view of science where it is considered that some postmodernists are attacking science without understanding the way it proceeds although one can not ignore the fact that scientists do tend to make make general assumptions. For example, there is the view that it is the male sperm that competes for the female egg without considering the role the egg might be playing in this by actually attracting the sperm. 


Some of the main post-modernists are Derrida, Barthes and Foucault also Said. Salman Rushdie's novel Midnights Children is considered to be the ultimate post-modern novel; it lacks the structure of an ordinary novel. Cindy Sherman is considered to be a postmodern photographer; I would like to add Martin Parr to that since his images do not reveal the strictness of much photographic composition as in his horizons sometimes being at an angle.


Postmodernism has questioned authority particularly in the way power tends to have its' own discourse.


Yet sometimes postmodernism does seem to assume ignorance on the behalf of it's audience. There are a lot of things that people don't really need to be told.

Struth

The OCA are seeing the Struth exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery tomorrow; I had planned to be there but am delayed in Delhi, waiting for my book to go to press. In fact, I did feel a sense of awe over the prospect of visiting this exhibition, one in which the photographer is being represented very much as the artist rather than merely a photographer.

One can find out about Struth on the net of course. He actually studied art initially at the Dusseldorf School being taught by the now well known Gerhard Richter, who sometimes uses photography in his work. It was however the Bechers who taught him photography. Their approach is a strictly documentary one in which the detail of scenes is accurately communicated; there is something refreshing I find in this honest approach although it might be considered a bit lacklustre. The Bechers for instance mostly photographed industrial buildings.

My first impressions of the exhibition come from other OCA students as well as Gareth Dent who gives a brief account of the visit, saying ... "There can be few photographers for whom the difference between viewing images on web and seeing them printed in a gallery is so dramatic as Thomas Struth"


One student called Jim makes an interesting few points about his experience ...


• That images such as these can provoke some serious thought, way beyond the initial response of ‘I like or don’t like that’.
• You don’t always need a focal point and something to lead the eye through the picture.
• Artistic pictures can be technically excellent as well!

Martin Parr - exhibition in Bristol - 1

The photographer Martin Parr is having an exhibition in Bristol. He is the first photographer of note that I studied with though at that time he had only just joined Magnum as an associate; now he is a full member and head of Magnum UK.

There is an exhibition talk and I have been asking other OCA students to join me there via the OCA Flickr group ...

"An exhibition of Martin Parr's work is going to be on show in Bristol this autumn.

Parr is a leading UK photographer, head of Magnum UK, whose work attracts a lot of controversy; he is of interest not just to photographers but also students of visual culture.

Actually, anyone with an interest in contemporary Britain especially Bristol might like it ...

Any other OCA students interested in meeting up there?

Amano"


REVIEW
www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jun/12/martin-parr-b...

DETAILS
events.magnumphotos.com/exhibition/bristol-and-west-photo...

BOOKLET download
www.intellectbooks.co.uk/File:download,id=424/2.martin%20... 




Henri Cartier-Bresson, the great French photographer, was said to be "highly suspicious" of Martin Parr's work. The suggestion is that he is laughing at his subjects rather than documenting them.

Parr's photographs make me laugh and yet I wonder why.

Perhaps it is that by holding up very ordinary scenes for display, he is relieving us of the misery they tend to inflict upon us!? Perhaps he weighs on our capacity for guilt which is why some find him disturbing. Personally, I find his images full of insight and humour.


It seems easy to go over the top about Parr and so a little information might help to make any OCA conversation less backchat and more constructive.


Brian aka Noble Savage wrote ...


Where do you see opposition to Martin (Parr) Amano? He's always been controversial, particularly within Magnum, but I haven't heard anyone say he should go off and do something else.
I cringe rather than laugh at his photos, but both are valid emotional responses.
I enjoyed hearing him speak a few months back when he was very sharp with people who tried to praise him in intellectual terms, eg "how does your work achieve such a marvellous three-dimensionality?" - "what do you mean, it's a photo, it's only two dimensional". Inspirational.. 


I replied ...


Well, I have heard opposition to Martin Parr voiced on OCA days.

Was it not you Noble Savage who did a post about Parr's portrait day when he was photographing people for a tidy yet not unreasonable sum? You were quite surprised I think by some of the reactions to that post.

Parr is controversial for sure. I find myself trying to understand my reaction to his work ... 


Brian continued ...


It was me who started that post, and I said I admired his marketing genius. At the end of that thread I also said "All my posts express my respect for Parr in some area. I also said I'd swap places with him anytime."

I was only surprised that people hadn't read my posts fully before metaphorically putting words in my mouth.

In a different post I also expressed admiration. I'm a big fan, perhaps just not unconditionally so.


I continued ...


Have just purchased a copy of Martin Parr by Val Williams (about £20) which contains images as well as a good critique of his work. I would like to develop a more informed view of this controversial leading UK photographer who seems to have a foot in both the documentary and the art world.

OCA tutor, Peter Haveland comments that some students particularly more mature ones tend to overlook contemporary work for more traditional or proven material. I know that when I went to Bradford this year for the OCA view of From Back Home, I had to see the Fay Godwin exhibition; the difference between the two exhibitions was striking.


A interview with Parr and a brief review of the exhibition that opened yesterday ... !

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/8723045/The-... 




I read Val Williams' book about Martin Parr (published by Phaidon). She starts by saying that Parr's photos "can make us feel very uncomfortable" which seems to be a fairly typical approach and one that I do not share. Apparently, Parr is good friends with Bruce Gilden which does not surprise me much yet reminds me of that other side to Parr, the side that is as tough and as solid as the metal and glass in his camera. I know I do not want to intrude into people's lives the way Gilden does on the streets of NYC and yet I don't see Parr as such a merciless snooper.


One of Parr's books that he sees as one of the most important is Common Sense; the cover shows a rusty model of the globe which is being used as a money box, a reflection of his "growing preoccupation with globalism and the corporate culture". Val Williams also describes this book as "violent", a violence that is increased by showing objects of possible veneration such as a cup of tea in a willow-patterned tea cup with more grotesque object of consumerism.


By 2001, Parr was quoted as saying that his best photography was behind him rather than in front of him. It is not easy to draw conclusions about him because his work is so diverse and complex in meaning. One might call him a post-modern photographer perhaps since he pays little attention to the so-called rules of photography in which composition is much more formal and colours not so gaudy.