Hi, Sunday, November 23, 2003, 4:19:29 PM, you wrote:
>> http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/indexen.html > Try http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/jacobson/magnum1.html >> The essay is by Colin Jacobson, who is one of the UK's leading photo editors. >> He discusses Martin Parr's work used for very unflattering >> advertisements, and has comments from David Hurn, Parr's colleague in >> Magnum, and others. >> His stylistic approach has been widely imitated by contemporary photographers, >> and is generally perceived to represent a rejection of the black and white >> documentary >> tradition passed down by magazines such as Picture Post and Life. > I have always thought that his work is more of an extension of the > documentary tradition. Photographers of the past might have used low-key > to emphasise grimy, industrial landscapes, or high key to demostrate > happy times. Martin uses colour, in a different way but to the same > ends. It's a different type of documentary style from the Picture Post and Life style. Parr is more in the tradition of Tony Ray-Jones, who worked in the style of people like Joel Meyerowitz (they were friends), and turned that style onto the English scene. Parr has extended that with the use of colour and, in my opinion, a less sympathetic, perhaps even hostile, eye. You can trace the development by looking at Parr's early black & white work, comparing it with Ray-Jones (probably a genius), and see how it has changed. I admire Parr's work enormously, and his massive influence on British photography and film-making, but I don't like the attitude he seems to express in his work. I prefer the old-fashioned ideas of humanism and dignity that Jacobson mentions. Jacobson has an essay in the current edition of 'ei8ht' (www.foto8.com) in which he laments the attitude of the art world towards photojournaism and documentary photography. In it he takes a swipe en passant at Parr: "I just make it to 'Cruel + Tender' at Tate Modern before it closes. [...] The show itself seems an incoherent mess, randomly thrown together to make some kind of 'statement'. The usual suspects are included from British photography, Martin Parr and Paul Graham ..." [...] "The art world feels threatened by good photojournalism, and feels the need to rubbish it and then subsume it into the gallery circuit to control it, like a dangerous wild animal. I have an explanation for this. Successful reportage photography is hard work, time-consuming and requires huge amounts of talent, energy, patience and committment. It's much easier and quicker to resort to 'biographical' me-me-me photography, the more obscure the better." He goes on. Very enjoyable. Subscribe! -- Cheers, Bob mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
