Martin Parr

Martin Parr

(23/05/1952)

Martin Parr’s work is invading, morbid and very personal. His snap shot approach to documenting people shows the viewer a real, un-posed and un-staged view.

It makes the audience wonder how Parr manages to capture some of his pictures, without conflict with his subjects. Dodgy angles and revealing body parts are a common sight in the work of Martin Parr. Critics claim he is mildly eccentric to embarrassingly vulgar. Love his work or hate it; Parr has a definitive personal style and approach to photography.

I feel Parr has taken the style of H C Bresson and turned the decisive moment into the everyday, by choosing to make images which show of people in a way that’s almost ridiculing and portraying a whole group of people in a negative light, just as with his images based on Brighton, a popular holiday destination at the time.

The high level of saturation in his images has become a key trademark to his work.

Whether you believe in such instances as the image below that this is a good thing is personal preference. The images were all captured using a ring flash, Martin Parr favors this due to the way it doesn’t add directional shadows from the flash output onto the images, enhancing his whole appearance of capturing the place and people as they are.

Masquerade magazine (10/2010) Brighton photo beinnial 2010, from : http://masquerademagazine.blogspot.com/2010/09/brighton-photo-biennial-2010.html (accessed: 15/05/2011)