Martin Parr is the greatest photographer on the whole earth
And probably the greatest before the invention of photography too.
Martin Parr is the greatest photographer on the whole earth, no matter what.
You can see many different photos from many different photographers and still when you stumble into one Martin Parr it could be only Parr. Why?
There are many points of view, but only one Parr
Photography is basically the expression of one point of view. There’s the technique of course, but what sets a photographer and defines him is his own point of view. Try this: how many times you can be fooled into thinking that this was taken by one photographer and instead it was another one? Many times, I suspect. Parr is different: he’s got his own style (heavily defined by his techniques — the use of flash light, the close-ups and so on) but it’s only him that can take pics like his ones.
An epiphany
His shots can be read like “Uhm, clever” but also like the real and genuine expression of our times: he usually focuses on people, more often middle class or even wealthy people. His interest appears to be describing them with their own objects and symbols, being them religious or just coming form the material society: expensive objects, repetitive patterns, contrasts.
Like any true expression of art, he adds a meaning to the plain and common reality. Its hidden meaning was already there and he is the decoder: he’s able to use elements that we can easily recognize, arranging them into a composition which tells a different story.
Un-beauty photos
Parr asks you to forget that a photo can be beautiful too. He’s not looking for this thin layer of beauty. Taking a beautiful shot is pretty easy: follow some rules, choose your subject, have a good light and the trick is done.
His shots don’t show any concept of beauty. They simple don’t care about it. Their story is an intellectual mechanism: they require the observer to use his/her brain: connecting the dots into the photo, find the path and get the meaning. It could be the repetition of a pattern, some colors, the juxtaposition of elements like in the above acropolis picture, where the visitors are (or are supposed to be) more important than the monument itself. So important that on the background another group of tourists are turning their shoulders on them, like they’re doing to the Parthenon.
The observer
Parr is the observer: although his work could be read really like “a collection of lucky moments” when things happen together in that exact way, it’s easy to understand how big his attention should have been to get exactly that shot. You can feel he’s been around his subjects for a very long time, maybe not even taking a single shot, just smiling and chatting. What was he doing? Collecting impressions, composing the frame into his mind. Then, like a hunter, when the right time has come, he was there with his camera.
In time like these
These days there are tons of photos around. Many very good one. Many just beautiful. Lot of professional stuff done by pros that know how to get the thing done. Killers, maybe.
Parr is not looking for any kind of beauty except for the intellectual one: his compositions are often, well, good. What’s great about him is that he requires the observer’s brain to deliver the message. The observer is active, not passive. The message is “Go further: the meaning is not on the surface, it’s beneith it”. It’s a brain in action, that’s what he’s working on.
