The British living legend invites us to explore his entire work between humor and social criticism at the Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière in Paris.
© Martin Parr Magnum Photos
Courtesy by Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière
© Martin Parr Magnum Photos
Courtesy by Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière
In his fifty-year career, Martin Parr has created fiction from reality, marking European visual culture.
This native of Epsom in the United Kingdom, who will blow his 70 spring on May 23, remains still today one of the most recognizable photographers through an aesthetic and a mischievous humor worn on the vanities of the world.
Spurred on by his photography-loving grandfather, Martin Parr had a career at the Manchester Polytechnic before reaching international fame in 1986.
His series The Last Resort puts aside the black and white, hitherto used, and sublimates the bright colors, portraying families on holiday in New Brighton, a small resort in decline.
© Martin Parr Magnum Photos
Courtesy by Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière
His ironic vision of the absurdity of everyday life thus rubs shoulders with the games of offsets and the worked compositions of images taken on the spot. His favorite themes portray with derision the English working classes, this fascination for the beach, mass tourism, and the new consumerism, like his series Small World.
Unfiltered
The Martin Parr Foundation and the Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière in Paris, which he recently joined, invite us to this journey back in time, from the late 1970s until today.
This virtuoso, who became a member of the photographic cooperative Magnum in 1994, knew how to make every detail of banality “a micro-event.”
© Martin Parr Magnum Photos
Courtesy by Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière
Through this so-British irony, his innovative imagery, and his oblique approach to social documentary, his work always plays on several levels of reading. In addition to its legendary clichés, the exhibition presents one of his lesser-known series, in Chew Stoke, in the Somerset in England, published in a book available in French.
It takes place in the daily life of an English village where he captures with his usual biting Sunday meals, cricket matches, small local shops, horse races, pub parties, and village parties.
© Martin Parr Magnum Photos
Courtesy by Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière
Through this beautiful exhibition, the Clémentine de la Féronnière gallery also transforms its bookstore into a pop-up, offering a photo studio and products derived from the photographer.
Martin Parr exhibition – Clémentine de la Féronnière Gallery
51 rue saint-Louis-en-l’île, 75004 Paris, France
Until May 6, 2023
https://www.galerieclementinedelaferonniere.fr/en/
Nathalie Dassa