WEEKLY DISCUSSION 2.0 #8 - Martin Parr

<p><em>New Brighton</em>, Martin Parr, 1983-1985: <br /> http://www.rafaelroa.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/martin-parr-brighton-02.jpg</p>

<p>This photo is one from his series THE LAST RESORT, featured here by Magnum:<br /> http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2S5RYDYDHEB9</p>

<p>A few quotes offering contrasting ideas on the work:</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>Parr has habitually discovered visitors at their worst, greedily eating and drinking junk food and discarding containers and wrappers with an abandon likely to send a liberal conscience into paroxysms of sanctimony. Our historic working class, normally dealt with generously by documentary photographers, becomes a sitting duck for a more sophisticated audience. They appear fat, simple, styleless, tediously conformist and unable to assert any individual identity. They wear cheap flashy clothes and in true conservative fashion are resigned to their meager lot. Only babies and children survive ridicule and it is their inclusion in many pictures which gives Parr’s acerbic vision of hopelessness its poetic touch.</em> —Critic David Lee</p>

</blockquote>

<blockquote>

<p><em>Traditionally, documentary photography in Britain sought to glorify the working class; here Parr shows a warts-and-all picture of a down-at-heel resort populated by day trippers seeking cheap thrills. The series contains many images of people dressed in the day-glo lycra fashions of the time, eating junk food in the crumbling remains of a seaside town. In the 1980s The Last Resort was seen as an indictment of the market-led economic policies of the Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher (Prime Minister 1979-90). Some critics understood Parr’s depiction of an area of economic deprivation and his focus on his subjects’ personal indulgences as a political statement decrying the excesses of Thatcherism. More recently, in her monograph on Parr, Val Williams has proposed a less political reading of the pictures. In her view, The Last Resort typifies Parr’s incisive eye for the eccentric. She has commented, ‘There’s no cynicism in Parr’s gaze, just interest, excitement and a real sense of the comedic’</em> —from intro to exhibition at the Tate</p>

</blockquote>

<blockquote>

<p><em>I’m less interested in the fact that these people aren’t well off financially as in the fact that they have to deal with screaming kids, like anyone has to ... I’m also interested in making the photographs work on another level, showing how British society is decaying; how this once great society is falling apart.</em> —Martin Parr</p>

</blockquote>

<p>And how 'bout that color. The logical next step after Eggleston in America.</p>

<p>Please don't limit comments to the series as a whole, as I'm interested to hear thoughts on the photo I linked to. Also feel free not to take up the photo or series in light of the comments I quoted, if you prefer to just react on your own terms.</p>

<p>Liverpool's New Brighton, New York's Coney Island or Portland Maine's Old Orchard beach in the last century, or families and children on beaches in the more polluted sections of the St. Lawrence River before clean-up progressed are each similar in showing a part of humanity. The people are the same, and their behaviour as well, although perhaps it is more stark where more of a class system exists.</p>

<p>When you have limited means you take your pleasures where you can, and economically. Because the beach is a near utopian dream of the poor can we expect it to be pristine, uncluttered and beautiful. The middle class and rich may have that luxury and atmosphere, but the poor or uneducated or both live at the seaside like they do or are obliged to in general. I think what Parr is showing is simply that and no more.</p>

<p>I disagree with the critique that in these particular photos Parr is showing the society in degradation. He is showing but a limited section of it and the people he chooses to show are behaving naturally and as they would have done in the same communities 50 or even 100 years ago. The photos exhibit much color and suggestions of pleasure, but are disrupted by the disorder of the life of the poor and the underprivileged (the latter in terms of British class division, limited opportunities and education). This has not changed much, and equivalent situations no doubt exist elewhere.</p>

<p>Was the group behavior of these same people different 50 or 100 years ago? That is probably doubtful. Parr is holding up a mirror on a small part of society. Perhaps a mirror held up on higher placed individuals who are entrusted with the resources ands values of the society would reveal more of any degradation that has occurred. </p>

<p>I know I haven't commented much on the individual photos presented here, but as with an individual photographer, it seems that there is a lot to learn from a series. What I have noticed about this series is that every photographer is a white male. Interesting given that there are so many photographer from so many places that bring diverse visions that reflect their cultural heritage yet are apparently invisible on this series, giving it a very monolithic viewpoint.</p>

<p>I think Parr could be described as a social critic, as easily as a photographer. You could say Martin Parr is to <em>Picture Post</em> as Robert Frank is to <em>Life</em> magazine.</p>

<p>I'm racking my brains thinking of when I first heard of his work. I lived in London in the 1980s, when his career was getting traction. I thought he might have had a show at The Photographers' Gallery, but no, no record of that. And then I thought I might have seen his work on the miners' strike, but again, he apparently missed that. I suppose I must have read something he wrote, but it's a mystery.</p>

<p>As for the photo, it's got everything. It's compositionally a good photo, even if it didn't have any arresting content. It's got visual contrast, and contrast in the subject matter, like the juxtaposition of the baby and the floating trash. The colors are a bit harsh (bet you a dollar it's Cibachrome), which is a bit dislocating, just like the decapitated body. Great piece.</p>

<p>Dave, in one of the pieces I read about the series, it's mentioned that he used medium format with daylight flash. Do you think that could account for the saturation of colors or would the processing be more important in that respect?</p>

<p>Phil, when I first saw this, the baby struck me as being mannequin-like in kind of a good way, almost posing the question of how real this all was. I mean, these seem to me very "real" shots, as you say, "thrown into the world at this particular moment" and yet they often have a character or two that's caught as if in a trance or a doll-like state or at least in a more stilled and less animated way than the rest of the people. For me, it often provides an interesting contrast and view of life and the moment captured.</p>

<p>Arthur, you might be interested in a couple of his other series, <a href="http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=29YL53AJJYY">COST OF LIVING</a> which explores the middle class and <a href="http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=29YL53F3ASMV">LUXURY</a>, more recently done.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Damn, you're right. I must be getting old to have missed that-- clearly he's used fill flash as part of his technique, so the background is maybe a stop underexposed. It's not an 'easy' photo to look at, but it's an effective technique.</p>

<p>Somewhere else I read that Mr Parr uses (or used) ring flash, which explains the full-frontal deer-in-the-headlights lighting. I still suspect he printed that on Cibachrome, which was sort of the Kodachrome of Type 'R' print materials-- lots of saturation, and I'm told it was easy to do your own printing. (I don't know; I've never printed color.)</p>

<p>By the way, Fred-- thanks for starting these discussions up again.</p>

 

<p>I looked at Martin Parr's work as part of a course I did a few years ago. Some people seem to think of him as being exploitative, based only on The Last Resort, probably his best known series. Actually he did some very telling black and white work earlier in his career, in Ireland and the North of England. For example Bad Weather. He also did a colour series on English Food, and one about peoples relationships with there cars (A to B) - amongst many others.</p>

<p>He certainly has the knack of recording people and things "warts and all" but in a non-judgemental way in my opinion. I think he should only be judged after taking his whole output into account.</p>

<p>Whereas Eggleston uses the surroundings and constructions of man to communicate something about life, Parr has chosen like Cartier-Bresson to show man himself. His use of two dimensional fill flash in bright ambient light seems to increase the analytical nature and ability of the observer Parr and contributes in part I think to the raw appearance of many of his pictures, accentuated by getting in close to his subjects. The softness and sculpting seen in many of Cartier-Bresson's work (a photographer that influenced Parr, in addition to those photographers of the more contemporary aesthetic) is gone, but replaced by a more questioning eye.</p>

<p>Series are hard to do I think, as what should be a flow or evolution of an idea can often be simply more and more copies of what initially was seen. Perhaps Parr does better than most at this, particularly in the series presented here and in his Luxury series that Fred has added with another as links. We get a glimpse of the lives of others (ourselves) via the camera of Parr, as we did with Cartier-Bresson or Boubat, but rather than the kind and amusing look at society we are being asked to judge what we see. The multitude of such images, do they influence us any more than the once repeated hazards of smoking, the industrial wasteland of a or the impact of evidence of climate change. But as Phil S suggests, it is important to hold a mirror on those of us in the west as well as some of the less affluent populations elsewhere.</p>

<p>His apparent use of a less known moderate wide angle medium format camera, the 6x7 cm Plaubel Makina wide, like Salgado's use of a medium format SLR camera, before both switched to digital somewhere around the mid-90's, is probably recognition that their output and commentary on contemporary life is more meant to be displayed as relatively large format prints in exhibitions as well as in the printed or electronic media, whereas the 35mm Leicas of a Cartier-Bresson or Winogrand were mainly restricted to the publications. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>As I see the work of Parr, I see him as the sociologist, equipped with a camera and not a pen.</p>

<p>His photos - or rather photo series - are always three dimensional: two dimensions shown to the eye of the viewer, those of photography as medium, and a third dimension offering reference points to society as a social, economic, political and ideological sphere, where we all spend our lives. However, as Emile Durkheim, the father of modern sociology, wrote : sociology is not worth our efforts if it is only speculative. As a sociologist, Parr shows us the social conditions and social context (here of the working class on vacation) with focus on what sociologist would call: "externality" the reality (sui generis) outside of the particular individual. Parr does not make his photos and do not publish them, only to entertain (our curiosity) but in order to inform on living conditions of the working class inviting the viewer to become informed and reflect on conditions - and change. His photos are militant.</p>

<p>No need to make reference to what was happening in England in the 1980s when Parr went to New Brighton seaside resort just outside Liverpool, to shoot his series: Margaret Thatcher had been prime minister since 1979, promoting individualism and attacking the welfare state, surpressing working class salaries and curtailing trade union power. Neo-liberalism took hold.</p>

<p>So, Parr publish the "The Last Resort" (why "last" ? No hope for the future ? ?) with the photo Fred has offered us this week. Again a great choice Fred !</p>

<p>We see the kind of photos Parr has become known for with his sharp, saturated photos of ordenary people going about with what people in general do when they are at a seashore resort on a free day from work: A couple with child in the foreground here the man's head is out of view, but we see the mother preparing to change her baby's nappy, with the baby's dummy in the mouth, a black couple (no! they are not "African Americans" - just a black English couple), another younger couple further behind and young girl playing with her foot in the water on the right. <br>

All well composed and separated figures in the frame. And yes we have dirt accumulated almost between the legs all of the figures, we have demi-fashionable tee-shirts, shorts and covers - and ordinary working class people relaxing at the sea-side, side by side. And yet, we have this third dimension of reflexion on society and its social stratification, its family centered isolation. </p>

<p> </p>

 

<p>When I look at these photos, I see that Parr has made the definitive statement about what most Britons always knew about themselves that when going to the seaside: you have to make do with what is available. If it is wet and cold, and there's no sand - never mind we will make do. I have never been particulary fond of his rather unsubtle fill in flash work - widely copied since unfortunately. I suppose one can read all sorts of stuff into it about Thatcher's Britain and since he took them then, this is is inescapable, but I think these shots would have worked anytime in the last 40 years to show the British working class on holiday - this is a more extreme location, but it represents only some kind of peak of summer behavior at British seaside towns: there are many others that show similar scenes, if less concentrated.</p>

<p><em>"I suppose one can read all sorts of stuff into it"<br /></em><br>

<em> </em><br>

I'm sure you are right, Robin. I can even see myself playing with my foot in the water.<br>

However, the strength of Parr's photography is that viewers seldomly miss to see what Parr wanted us to see: the working class spending an agreeable time at the sea-side, and at the same time telling us something about the working class at that specific time of history, in that specific country - and he manages even also to tell us about working class behaviour and working class life in general making his photos relevant for viewers thirty years later. The strength of Parr's photography becomes universal.</p>

<p>I'm less certain of what Parr wanted us to see, especially in light of what he says, which is quoted in the OP.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>I’m less interested in the fact that these people aren’t well off financially as in the fact that they have to deal with screaming kids, like anyone has to ... I’m also interested in making the photographs work on another level, showing how British society is decaying; how this once great society is falling apart.</em> —Martin Parr</p>

</blockquote>

<p>And I don't take the photographer's words as the ultimate authority either, since I think any photographer's work goes beyond what he may say about it and I think there are many readings of a photo.<br /> <br /> One of the reasons I liked Phil's initial response to the photo is that he described what he was seeing, directly, rather than what he knew. He was staying within the frame rather than connecting things to outside the frame. I'm not saying this is the only or the best way to look at this photo. I'm saying it's a way that I, too, often first look at photos. Then, later, if and when I do put the photo into social context and relate it to the world it's a part of, I feel I have a deeper experience of what's going on.</p>

<p>Fred, one goes with the other. The screaming kids (not the one on the photo who shows calm interest in Parr's shooting) and the other ordinary things that are happening in his photos are surely their strenght, they are anchored in the real world, not an abstract concept of reality - but then comes the:<br>

<em>"showing how British society is decaying; how this once great society is falling apart." In one and the same photo or photo series.</em></p>

<p>I agree with you Anders, these are indeed a powerful set and show us that place and time and with splendid detail. As such they are a wonderful historical document - this is one of the things that photography is all about and in many ways its speciality. Whether it really shows what Parr said about a great society falling apart and so is more debatable to me.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"showing how British society is decaying; how this once great society is falling apart." In one and the same photo or photo series."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>This is a non ambiguous and very strong statement. I am not sure it is that meaningful in the context of these images and what Parr was thinking about this series when he said that. I see little decay in those images. Imagine what life was like for the poor and constrained classes in pre twentieth century or even through to the 1970s or 80s. Things were really no different in the behaviour and characteristics of those same people. Do the images of middle class or the very rich cast any better light on the health of the society or lack of it? Perhaps, but they don't really make a mockery of English values, or am I not seeing the point? The play of the middle and upper classes has always been similar. I know. I co-inhabited in London with a British socialite when a college student - any loss of traditional values were just as apparent then as observed as he went from debutante party to debutante party throughout the summer and with little other interest.</p>

<p>Parr may have felt that English society was no longer very noble or dynamic, but do his photos of rich people enjoying themselves really show that? I would be interested to hear if any others take away from viewing his images a similar question (I just noticed Robin's somewhat similar question a few minutes earlier).</p>

<p>This was my point Arthur too. One could argue that the class and wealth divisions were much greater during the '20s and '30s and that life for everyone was more monochrome and decayed in the 70s, for example. It is a statement of the obvious that Parr's pics depict Thatcher's Britain, but I am reluctant to read any more into it than that. Parr's quote begs the question: so when was British society "great"? During the imperialist era, Elizabeth 1, during WW2?</p>

<p>Well, I don't think it would be fair to ask Parr to provide proof of the falling apart of the British society or even less answer the question: when British society was "great".<br>

Maybe the "falling apart" was more a predictive vision of what was about to happen under the rule of Thatcherism, which indeed at that time (beginning of the 80's) threatened greater parts of the working class and lower middle-class, which would see their meager salaries stagnate (in buying-power) if not fall during many years ahead (still the case) and a working class which would loose its social solidarity and fall apart socially, politically and ideologically. The non-communication between the figures in this weeks photo is maybe its strongest phenomenon.</p>

<p>Robin and Anders - very good. That was indeed my point, although I didn't relate it to the social changes invoked by Thatcher. Well known photographers are probably not unique in imbuing their objectives and approaches with current political or social issues, whatever the relation to their projects or themes.</p>

<p>In fact, this possible "putting the cart before the horse" is probably a problem many of us have. I have a series of photos I call "Identity" which I have been working on during the past year that seeks to show via man made objects of a certain age (including architecture) the identity of a people. But do they really? Maybe I am being too fanciful in fixing a meaning to them (or, in humble thought, too insufficiently competent to realize the objective!).</p>

<p>I quite like the images of Parr, his close-up relationship to his subjects (wide angle optics) and his graphical, curious and virtually all-encompassing ability of observation of subjects that reflect his British milieu.</p>

<p>"<em>....the identity of a people. But do they really? Maybe I am being too fanciful in fixing a meaning to them</em>"<br /> <br /> Maybe not/maybe ! Arthur, but you are surely touching at the essence of the questioning that all creative arts are confronted to. Parr also, without any doubt.<br>

His success as photographer with books and exposition might indicate that he manages a narrative with his photos that viewers find of interest. Whether he is just entertaining our curiosity as voyeurs looking at people living their lives or he indeed manages (in the same time) to communicate the "decay and "falling apart" of a society is still to be answered.<br /> In his own words, he is "classic soft Left" (not the Corbyn left !) and very British. His observation on cakes is a good way into how he thinks and shoot:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>even iced cakes can tell a story of moral and social decline (he took a memorable photograph of a tray of them, decorated as little pink pigs). “At a fête,“ he says, “you see a cake somebody’s spent an hour making, the ingredients probably cost 50p, and it’s being sold for a pound for charity. That home-made cake, slightly skew-whiff, made with love, is very moving. But a similar cake in a commercial baker’s with its kitsch colours is the embodiment of the consumer society at its worst. So a cake can embody everything that’s good or bad about the world.“</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br /> Se interview with him <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3615454/Ordinary-lives-extraordinary-photographs.html">here</a>.</p>

<p>Anders, thanks. A very good example and informative interview. He is quite natural, conscious and thoughtful. I will look more at his work and with that knowledge.</p>

<p>Without knowing or dwelling too much on the social situation, and not knowing too much of the British character except at a remove, I like the fact that the photographs have a certain ambiguity, allowing you to look at them as you will. Look at the slummy people in the slummy resort, acting as if it's normal, how complacent and impervious they seem. Do they notice or care how shabby it is? Or, look at the stolid, realistic but perhaps a little optimistic British, keeping calm and carrying on - the place is dirty, poorly maintained and crowded, but they're doing what they can to enjoy it, and having plenty of babies too. The world is an odd and contradictory place, and the glass that is half empty is also half full.</p>

<p>" Look at the slummy people in the slummy resort"</p>

<p>Why are they slummy people? Is it because they have not got pockets full of gold...just peasants? Is that what makes them slummy?</p>

<p>Martin Parr photography, to my mind, is about being the showman...just a snapper; sensational colours without any real perceptions of humanity or art. Henri Carter Bresson had the same thoughts that's why he objected to him joining Magnum....</p>

<p>It is not always about grey skies and rain..</p><div></div>

<p>I sense Cartier Bresson would not retract a word he said about Parr's work even given what Parr, himself, has to say. And that's because Bresson would be <em>wise</em>, though I think not <em>right</em>. Bresson would allow the photos to speak to him despite what the photographer who made them says. Bresson could just as much be right as Parr is about Parr's work, though he's <em>not</em> IMO. Bresson would probably accept at face value what Parr's intentions were and how his biography may have influenced him, but he doesn't have to accept Parr's analysis of his own work. </p>

 

<p>It's fascinating. I just look at Bresson's work and Parr's work and I can see why Bresson would say what he's said. Looking at Parr's work, from my own vantage point, I'm much more impressed with what the reviewer calls his luridness and lack of sobriety. I always found Bresson, decisive moment and all, rather ordered, almost mathematically so, you might say . . . decisively so. Aside from Parr's departure from black and white, he's loosened things up as well and shown us a less formalized humanity.</p>

<p>Thankfully, Bresson is not the standard from which other photographers need be seen.</p>

<p>I do in think HCB considered himself a touchstone of candid photography. Indeed in his latter years he rescinded his thoughts about the so called decisive moment. However, he was/ is a much respected photographer and his thoughts and opinions are valid.</p>

<p>In these threads which you have very kindly introduced should, in my opinion. reflect different views. </p>

<p>Those are mine.</p>