>Re-PHOTO

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 Britain’s 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.

This is very much the year of China, so it came as no great surprise to see the winner of the Pix Pictet 2008 was Canadian photographer Benoit Aquin for a series of images, The Chinese ‘Dust Bowl’. The 10 images on the front page of the web site are perhaps a little too small to really judge the images, which are inkjet prints varying from 34×52 cm to 86x132cm  (13×20″ to 34×52″ for those of us who still inhabit an imperial universe.) As in the pictures of Ferit Kuyas who I wrote about earlier in the year and others, China is seen through a dim haze of pollution.

Aquin’s series of pictures would probably not have been my first choice, but certainly would have featured in my top two or three not least for taking the theme of water in the context of sustainability seriously;  it seemed at best peripheral to some other entries.

Those short-listed were Edward Burtynksky, Jesus Abad Colorado, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Sebastian Copeland, Christian Cravo, Lynn Davis, Reza Deghati, Susan Derges, Malcolm Hutcheson, Chris Jordan, Carl De Keyzer, David Maisel, Mary Mattingly, Robert Polidori, Roman Signer, Jules Spinatsch and Munem Wasif.

In another announcement made at the awards ceremony, Munem Wasif was selected for the commission to document WaterAid’s Chittagong Hill Tracts Project in Bangladesh which is supported by Pictet & Cie. If you don’t already know Wasif’s work, his web site is certainly worth a look. He would also certainly have made my top three for the prize.

The prize entries also reflected another big story, Hurricane Katrina, although by now this seems rather passée, although I suspect either of these photographers might have got the award had this been the Prix Pictet 2006, but this year is the first of these competitions. Although I think Aquin’s work was more interesting, I do wonder how this and some other current high-profile work from China will seem to us when the Beijing games are a distant memory, and wonder whether some things are better left to World Press Photo.

You can see more of the pictures entered, along with a commentary by the head of the Prix Pictet jury, Francis Hodgson (a man who thinks stroboscopic lights are  high technology!) on a few selected photographers from those shown on the BBC web site. His comments about the broadest range of photography being invited to take part, even amateurs, is perhaps disingenuous; as my previous post on the Prix Pictet notes, this is a contest that no one can enter, the 18 short-listed photographers being selected by judges from names put forward by 49 leading experts.

I had hoped to get the opportunity to see the works at a preview in London, but this was cancelled at the last minute, probably because bankers were rather busy with other matters. Unfortunately I was too busy to take up my invitation to the opening of the show in Paris last week, where Kofi Annan awarded the £50,000 prize, and the show of short-listed works at the Palais de Tokyo closes on 8 November 2008, a couple of days before I arrive in Paris.

‘Jump You Bankers’