Martin Parr & the contemporary kitsch
From the 80s to today
Art & Design
December 3rd, 2015
December 3rd, 2015
Martin Parr is one the most popular British photographers and photojournalists nowadays. His projects have always criticized the modern society, consumerism, food and tourism.
His pictures - characterized by the use of high-contrast and bright colour - tell the story of the (bad) taste and behaviors of the English middle class in the 80s. With irony and subtle humour, Parr focuses ruthlessly on the stereotypes that form part of the Western culture.
Despite the beginnings as a photographer in black and white, in 1984 Parr starts working with colour, which emphasizes the funny side and humour of his work and becomes his trademark. Since 1994 he's under contract with the prestigious Magnum Photos.
Cotton candy and candied apples, melted butter on popcorns, fluffy slippers and prepackaged food, coloured nails and backcombed hair, tanning oil, wallpapers and fake plants, consumerism, mass tourism and stereotypes about food: Parr reveals us that tasteless and grotesque attitudes will always give us a familiar and reassuring feeling.
A pop portrait of the vanity fair of our theater of the absurd.
