“Much of the time my pictures don’t have much taste and that’s why they are very appealing”

(2022)

This was how Martin Parr expressed himself in an interview for the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation on the occasion of the exhibition Reconciliation. At first glance, it seems like a contradictory statement, yet it is this very paradox that consolidates him as one of the most important documentary photographers of our time; a portraitist of the ironic par excellence who sociologically studies gestures, objects, and those ridiculous customs exercised by the crowd. Through his iconic direct flash in broad daylight, he underscores our ordinariness with a comic provocation and stridency, inheriting from referents like, Tony Ray-Jones, but this time filtered through the chromatic lens of advertising campaigns. This approach, centred on the representation of leisure, has allowed him to specialise in documenting the different British social classes, national identity, and global tourism, making him the definitive photographer of the culture of waste and the customs we live day by day.

Thus, in this first room at MARC BIBILONI, the visitor can approach works from the most iconic and representative series of Parr's unmistakable vision, starting with The Last Resort (1983–1985); the series that introduced him to colour and through which he established his personal trademark. The crowded beaches of New Brighton: Rubbish and crying babies are part of many present-day landscapes. Photographs such as the one of the two children with their faces and clothes covered in ice cream condense Parr’s particular ambivalence: funny, affectionate images that simultaneously reveal social tensions, modes of consumption, and a reality completely removed from any idealization, a pioneering approach that challenged the conventions of classical documentary photography. Another renowned series presented in this space is Common Sense (1999); Mass-produced food, heavily painted lips, jewellery, polished nails, sunbaked skin, and cheap souvenirs are captured in intensely saturated colours, fragmentary framing, and harsh ring flash.

The second gallery space, on the other hand, focuses on how the Briton's visual language permeates the world of fashion. Clothing is often a case study of human behaviour, recurring in Parr, who inherited this scientific gaze during the incursions with his ornithologist parents during his childhood vacations, allowing him to develop his capacity as a human taxonomist. Instead of observing the plumage or the flight pattern of a bird, Parr focused on fur coats, bouffant hair, and painted nails, which functioned as symbols of a performativity of status, like masks demonstrating the human effort to fit in Maximalist designers and figures soon adapted to his point of view rather than the other way around, relinquishing their industry's inherent glamour to capture the photographer's authenticity. As he himself reflected:

“I don’t know anything about fashion. I’m not into designer labels. I don’t have one piece of designer clothing except one Paul Smith Jumper. I don’t have any idea who the designer is when I do a shoot (...) I come to fashion in perfect, blissful, ignorance” (Text extracted from the section Couture Kisses, Fashion Magazine, 2005).

Sadly, Martin died last December, leaving behind an immense archive and a foundation full of future. Martin turns wrinkles, ordinary bodies, and overlooked professions into beauty. The truth is, he has achieved something very difficult: forming his own semantic field. Every time we are on a beach blinded by the sun, in a line, sweaty in front of a monument that doesn't even interest us, in the supermarket overstimulated by the fluorescent lights, we think: "That’s so Martin!", and thus we ensure that his legacy is always on our retinas and in our way of living life.

Paula Tomasini Collado