Martin Parr's sandals

A few months back there was a post on Talk Photography announcing a talk in Worcester by Martin Parr. An unusual choice for a camera club speaker, but perhaps a sign of a shift in attitudes among amateur/hobbyist photographers.

I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get there but last week I bought a ticket anyway. As things panned out I was able to make the 130 mile drive and it was worthwhile. Naturally I took a couple of cameras intending to spend a bit of time wandering round the city. Equally naturally I got lost and had less spare time than I'd hoped.

In advance I'd tried to find out if there were any country or agricultural shows in the vicinity on the day of the talk. I couldn't find any, but just outside Worcester, at four thirty, I saw a sign to one. Too late! However, when visiting a cathedral city and you have to photograph the building itself. So I did.

 

With the venue for the talk being close to the river and the racecourse I had a wander round there. It was a surprise to find that you can walk across the racecourse.

 

With time running out I only managed a few snaps before heading to the Swan Theatre to get a mug of tea before the main event. I was told that more than 200 tickets had been sold, and the theatre was certainly packed. Although I thought I'd left it late to book I got a seat in the centre of the third row.

Having read a fair bit about Parr's work and watched quite a few interviews he's given on Youtube there wasn't much to see or hear that I didn't already know. However it was nice to ask a question and have a few words with him before and after the talk.

It's quite apparent that part of the reason for his success at recording people the way he does without getting assaulted is that he is unthreatening and extremely affable. His sense of humour was evident throughout the talk and during the giving of prizes for a competition the camera club had run, which Parr judged, and the presentation of raffle prizes. The most amusing bit being when the top prize of a day with Damien Demolder was announced and Parr said he'd never heard of the guy but was sure he was a good photographer. Demolder was sitting in front of me at the time!

One the camera front Panasonic had donated many of the prizes and had a display of their wares on show. I'd taken my toy camera along as I wanted to try it out during the talk as it is silent. I had a play with one of the lenses I had considered getting for it. Very nice. I might get rid of all the other single focal length Panasonic lenses I have and get that one to use purely for 'street' photography. Which is all I can bring myself to use the camera for.

Quite a few people were getting books signed and taking photos of Mr Parr. There was only one of the books he'd brought to sell that I hadn't got already. So I asked for a discount and got a couple of quid knocked off. Then I asked if I could photograph his sandals. To which he willingly agreed.

Although I didn't learn anything from the event it did get me thinking. Which is always good when you are in a bit of a rut.

It says a lot that a busy photographer of Parr's status is willing to drive from Bristol to Worcester to give a talk to people who aren't in the same photographic circles as he moves. So well done him, and well done Beacon Camera Club for talking him into it. Their speaker next year is Joe Cornish. I'll be giving that one a miss.

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Old book, new book

At long last I have found, and bought, a copy of Ian Berry's The English to replace my long lost copy. The condition is not great but the price was bearable. If I hadn't owned a copy before I would have been more likely to pay a higher price for a better copy. Not very logical. However I'm not a book collector. It's the pictures I want to have and this 'working copy' is fine for my purposes.

Published in 1978 this was the very first photobook I bought - almost certainly in the year of publication, a couple of years after I was given my first proper camera.

There seems to be a spate of books being published at the moment of photographs made in the UK around the late '70s and into the eighties. I'm still trying to avoid the temptation of buying them because I mistrust the nostalgic effect has on how such pictures are regarded. A new collection of old pictures is a different thing to an old collection of old pictures. That's why I had no compunction about buying The English. Besides, I already own a copy - I just don't know where it is!

Although I had forgotten most of the pictures in the book I soon realised just what an influence it had been on me. At the time it made me want to take photographs. It also introduced me to looking at photographs. Mostly I think it gave me my interest in photographs of British people doing ordinary things in their natural environment.

With a more educated eye than I had back then I can see influences in Berry's photographs - in both directions. There are hints of Tony Ray-Jones in the book, and also pre-hints (if you get my drift) of Martin Parr (who has cited Ray-Jones as an influence). Maybe there is something about British life that provokes a certain kind of photography? Subtle self-mockery combined with affection is part of it. There's also an attraction to tradition. Be that ancient tradition or modern.

In the introduction Berry states that England hadn't changed much in the 15 years between him leaving the country and his making the photographs in 1975. In a lot of ways it hasn't changed much in the 40 years that now have passed. Certainly not in the subjects which a British photographer like Martin Parr chooses to  aim his lens at.

Although I like Parr's garish work it can become tiresome, and I feel that he has also become something of a brand - which I naturally rebel against. He's still a fine photographer though, and having followed his work from the project he was involved with Multistory on-line over the last two or three years the publishing of Black Country Stories tempted me to buy a copy. It wasn't a disappointment.

Although the subject matter of Black Country Stories is the English it is a completely different book to Think of England. The photographs in this book are far more 'straight'. There's very little of the saturated colours and obvious use of flash and close-up. There is, on the other hand, plenty of his wit and acute observation.

While he has been criticised, at times, for cynical, fun poking portrayals of his subjects in this book the view that comes across is more that of the affectionate mockery which I mentioned earlier. It's a much warmer look at the subjects than often comes across in a Parr book. There are a lot of semi-formal portraits (such as the picture on the cover) in Black Country Stories. By which I mean pictures of people stopping what they are doing and looking at the camera. Sort of environmental portraits, but less obviously set up. More like 'street' portraits, but not always in the street! I like them a lot.

While things may have changed on the surface over the last forty years what these two books have shown me is that underneath it all people are still people, doing the things they have always done. Be that racing pigeons or putting out the bunting for a royal occasion - a silver jubilee and a royal wedding in the case of these two books.

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Sea Change - thoughts from an exhibition

Twice since it opened I've tried to visit an exhibition I'd been looking forward to at The Atkinson in Southport. Gallery staff must be even lazier than librarians because both times it hadn't opened by ten o'clock. Third time lucky when I waited until the idle gits had had their lunch!

The exhibition is called Sea Change and is of art relating to the coast of the England's north west. There are paintings drawn from the gallery's collection alongside works on loan. There's a parallel exhibition of postcard art, and another of lantern slides of old  Southport. Although billed as separate exhibitions they complement each other well with photography playing a large part throughout.

Something that struck me when looking at two paintings superficially similar in style was the difference between good art and okay art.

The Helen Bradley on the left has 'stick' figures as does the Lowry on the right. However two factors differentiate the two. The Lowry picture has a unifying structure to its composition, the figures being a part of it. Bradley's figures are placed at random, and more importantly on close inspection they look like 'Fuzzy Felt' figures dropped onto a flat surface. Although the Lowry seems simplistic there is space in the picture. Partly as a result of careful drawing, but also because of the use of tone and colour on the sand. Bradley's sand is all one tone and, despite the drawn perspective, flat. Her figures don't stand on the beach like Lowry's do. They hover over it. Which goes to show that it's easy to ape a stylistic mannerism like stick-people, but unless you fully grasp what it is built on (draughtsmanship and close looking) you only make a pastiche.

I'd been looking forward to seeing which pictures of Martin Parr's had been selected , and to see what they looked like as prints. Both on show were, unsurprisingly, from The Last Resort. To be honest, as objects, the 'real' prints didn't set me swooning over any magical properties. Nor did any of the other photographic prints on show. I really don't get the fuss some people make about 'fine prints' Maybe they weren't 'fine' enough!

Although they hadn't been billed in the advertising it was nice to see a couple of Tony Ray-Jones prints and a famous Bert Hardy. These were black and white prints on a small scale compared to the colour  Parr's. Which brought home to me once more that extra large prints can be a bit of an affection, and a good picture will work well at any scale. It's all down to the picture's structure -as per the Lowry.

Alongside the photographs mentioned was one by a photographer I wasn't aware of, Paddy Summerfield. It's always nice to be introduced to a 'new' photographer and he's one whose work I'll investigate more. There was another new-to-me name, but on the lines of 'if you can't say anything nice, say nothing, I'll leave it at that, except to say that the Bradley/Lowry comparison seemed applicable when I compared his work to that of another surprise inclusion, a large grid of pictures from John  Darwell's Not Starting from Here series.

It's kind of difficult to pin down the difference between the two, it's again partly picture structure, but subject matter and some intangible sense of vision and intent comes through in good photography. Less "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like" and more "I don't know much about art, but I know it when I see it". Which probably makes little sense. Maybe good photography doesn't look forced, while so-so photography looks laboured? I dunno. I do know that I try my best to make photographs that don't look like I've made an effort to frame them.

One of the things I like about photography is that pictures can be about small ideas. The postcard exhibition was full of small ideas. Some were rather grandly hung on the walls, mounted and framed, while others were laid out on tables (covered in glass). I much preferred the less precious table top display. Something that could be transferred to photographs, I think. I'll be returning for another visit, to concentrate on the paintings more.

I'd made a couple of pictures on my way to the Atkinson, but looking at the exhibition must have inspired me because I went off for a wander and made some more. I should have stuck with an idea I'd stumbled on beforehand. An accidentally out of focus 'street' shot got me thinking about the difficulties people have taking photographs in public places and the prevailing attitude of paranoia about privacy. Something that's been at the back of my mind for some time. It struck me that by deliberately missing focus you can achieve a degree of anonymity while still presenting a readable picture which can have a structure to it.

There was a postcard by Richard Hamilton that played around with the nature of photography and how parts of photographs appear as recognisable when small but become meaningless blobs when enlarged. I seem to remember that Tom Phillips had played around with a similar notion too, although more concerned with enlarging details from postcards.

So rather fitting that I photographed two flags later. Here the ability of photography to show the previously unseen (the reverse of what Hamilton is highlighting) was revealed when I viewed the file at 100%. The word 'ENGLAND' on the flags looked wrong. They're being flown upside-down!

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Carrying on regardless

Confronted by lonely balls at the beach when I went to look at what last week's gales had done I couldn't resist. So the series continues!

High tides coinciding with the strong wind had caused some damage. The lifeguard's hut which I have photographed on a number of occasions, in the way I repeatedly photograph things in the hope that one time I'll do so in a surprising way, was missing from it's supporting framework. Once more, in documentary terms, I was reminded how it can pay to photograph the familiar in order to record it before it is changed or disappears altogether.

I tried to make pictures from similar viewpoints to those I had used in the past. The problem was that I naturally framed the shots around what was in front of me, rather than what had been there just a couple of days before. As I had also stuck a short telephoto lens on the camera, and it had begun to rain making changing lenses risky, my hand was forced in terms of perspectives.

The first attempt were fairly predictable, showing the framework in its entirety with something in the background for some context or juxtaposition. I even made one frame with the kite surfer positioned in the gap in the railings. But that was just too obvious.

It was only after walking along the beach and returning that I made my favourite picture of the metalwork. It's not always necessary to get it all in to provide an overall impression of something.

A couple of books arrived this week as early Christmas presents to myself - Why It Does Not Have To Be In Focus: Modern Photography Explained and Martin Parr: The Non-Conformists. The former being just one of the multitude of books about photographic appreciation, theory and history that is available today. A far cry from my student days when there was very little. This one is primarily about what I think of as photography as art, rather than photography as photography. In most of the examples discussed the idea is more important than the image. It's a much easier read than the previous addition to my library in this category, Photography: A Cultural History. Not because of the text, but because of the size of the book!

I was trying to resist The Non-Conformists on the grounds that it would be more of that black and white nostalgia, which it is, but I gave in. I'm glad I did as it consists very much of the the sort of photographs which I liked looking at at the time (see also Ian Berry's The English) when I started taking photographs with a 'proper' camera. It's a style of composition which is either of its time or of its place, I'm not sure which. Perhaps a classical documentary style influenced by Cartier-Bresson. At its best it's not obvious, but it is a style. A choice of subject matter as well as composition I think. Certainly when it comes to the British picturing the British.

At first glance it might seem like Martin Parr's current colour style has little connection to the early black and white stuff. But I see a clear transition, and obvious influences - even, at times, a reversion. There is also inevitable repetition in his 'mature' work - and an obsession with sausages which is either overplayed seaside postcard humour, or something deeply Freudian!

Sausages and all I found this film on YouTube an interesting watch which makes it clear how Parr uses his personal charm to both get, and get away with, his shots. For some types of photography there's more to it than the gear and an eye for a picture. Personality plays a bigger part than is often admitted when it comes to what people choose to photograph.

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Unexpected pleasures

Today I had to take a trip to Liverpool and left enough time for a wander and a visit to the Tate.

I'd found out that there were some Keith Arnatt photographs on show in the Thresholds exhibition. The A.O.N.B series won't be to everyone's taste but it chimes with my view of the British landscape. Somehow I had missed the fact that there was other photography on show, so I was pleasantly surprised to see the work of Martin Parr and Sophie Calle exhibited.

What struck me was the different ways in which the works were presented. Arnatt's gelatin prints were mounted and framed in traditional style and hung in a row. Parr's laser prints were pinned to the wall unmounted in a grid. Calle's black and white pictures appeared to be printed as a grid on one sheet, framed behind glass, with a similar frame above of a colur picture and explanatory text. There was another work by Simryn Gill (who was new to me) consisting of 260 prints pinned to the wall in a large grid. I found that the least well presented as the prints were too small, detailed and numerous to be viewed or read easily. The lighting was also a bit dim at that end of the gallery.

None of these works seemed drastically different to viewing them in print or on the web. The image areas were no more than A3. The Arnatts a mere 8"x10". What was different was the Thomas Demand. At screen or book size the pictures of scenes recreated in card and paper look convincingly naturalistic. At the large size presented in the gallery the deception is clearly apparent. While this is no doubt a major part of the point, it made the exercise less interesting for me. I think I'd rather view the actual construction. Even so, as with much concept driven visual art, the idea is greater than the object. And when it's been done once, does it really need repeating?

The Open Eye Gallery has two new exhibitions opening on Friday, so I'll try and make longer cultural visit to the big city soon to visit that and revisit the Tate.

The rest of today's half decent stuff here.

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Martin Parr speaks

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