I spent the last weekend away from home, staying at a friend’s house in the north-east, where we had gone to celebrate his 90th birthday with a surprise party – with more friends coming from London and Sheffield for the event. Despite the misgivings of one of his neighbours – “What are you trying to do, kill him?” she asked – it went off well; we had after all known him for at least twice as long as her.
But being away from home, and in weather so poor I didn’t feel like going out anywhere with a camera left me plenty of time to read the papers, and in the Guardian Weekend Magazine I found a feature on ‘Martin Parr‘s Britain’, with 12 pages mainly of pictures from a lengthy project by him for the paper covering 10 English cities.
Parr was a photographer I admired greatly in the 1970s, although I’ve found some of his later work not entirely to my taste. He’s made a enviable reputation for himself, as well as a not so small fortune from his photography, but does sometimes seem to be cruising on that reputation rather than producing work of any consequence. And although there were a few pictures I admired in the feature, as a whole it left me thinking that far from (in the Guardian’s words) capturing “the essence of Britains cities” what we had was a few assorted glimpses of the wacky extremes of British (mainly English) eccentricity rather than any serious attempt to tackle the ostensible subject. It did really seem to be a good example of taking the easy way out, and I thought about writing a serious blog post about the work.
Perhaps fortunately I don’t need to, because Simon Roberts has done a very good job already. Although my thoughts would differ in detail, his UNDERWHELMED BY PARR raises some of the same thoughts that I had, mainly in quotations from letters on the Guardian web site, where you can see rather more of his project than appeared in Saturday’s magazine in a slide show called Pies, parties and pink drinks. Despite the joky title, this is a considerably better edit than that which appeared in the magazine.
Roberts of course has a certain competitive interest in the subject, having this year been engaged in his project ‘We English‘, supported by the National Media Museum, Arts Council England and The John Kobal Foundation, which he describes as ” a photographic journal of life in England in 2008“. At the moment if you click on the ‘GALLERY’ link at the top of this page it leads only to a picture of him with a page of biographical information. Perhaps when this emerges as the promised book and exhibition of 36×48 landscape prints in Autumn 2009, Martin Parr can be tempted to review it. Having so far only seen the two pictures in a Foto 8 feature I might well find Parr’s work of greater interest.
Your line “Parr was a photographer…” struck a chord with me too.
I had read Simon Robert’s post and looked through the ‘Pie, parties…’ selection. I came away with the same feelings you express: some pictures to be admired, but most just ‘padding’, albeit in a style that is unmistakeably ‘later Parr’.
That said, I think he just about gets away with it based on his past and, well, when you’re a member of Magnum you have to be taken seriously right?
I still find his work of interest, in the same way that I keep looking at Robert Frank’s work, even though he’s never produced anything as impressive and important as ‘The Americans’.
All credit to him also for engaging in a regular dialogue with his ‘fanbase’ over on Flickr – even if the more cynically-minded may consider it just another marketing ploy.
Simon Robert’s project is a bit of a mystery to me at the moment. I had high hopes of it and subscribed to the blog from the outset, but my interest waned a bit based on the few pictures released. I think they’ll need to be seen in their final exhibition form for me to really try to get a handle on his intentions. I think I understand what he’s up to based on his writings and his influences, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Yes, there is a little more about ‘We English’ in this week’s BJP but I’m still not convinced