Watches of Mass Destruction
Published: October 1, 2008
Attached to Martin Parr’s fridge is a set of photographic magnets. There’s nothing exceptional about that, except these magnets bear the lauded British photographer’s own imagery: an array of gaudy seaside souvenirs, sugarcoated snacks, and bronzed sun worshippers from Common Sense, his 1995–99 series about global consumerism and tourism. The magnets are Tate merchandise, made to accompany Tate Modern’s 2003 exhibition “Cruel and Tender,” which prominently featured Parr’s work. “That was a great achievement: to get published by the Tate, but as fridge magnets. I think it’s funny,” says Parr. “It’s the high chapel and it’s low art.” High and low. We alight on the subject sooner than I had anticipated, but it’s an inevitable topic of conversation with Parr, the 56-year-old Magnum photographer known for vivid, biting images that wryly critique contemporary society’s various echelons. Questions of taste and value, populism and exclusivity, always get balled together when any discussion of Parr’s work takes place. His storied collection, or rather collections—of old postcards, kitsch objects like watches bearing the face of Saddam Hussein, and rare photography books—prompt similar lines of inquiry. For Parr doesn’t collect art as such. “You have to draw the line somewhere,” he jokes, fully aware that for most collectors in his world, fine art is both the start and the finish line. Instead, as shown in “Parrworld,” a panoramic exhibition of his work and collections that is currently touring Europe; the accompanying books, Objects and Postcards, detailing his collections; and the two-volume The Photobook (coauthored with Gerry Badger), Parr has acquired a huge amount of stuff. At one end of his collecting spectrum are examples from the noble tradition of photojournalism against which Parr’s once controversial brand of brash, color-saturated imagery has so often been compared and juxtaposed. Our conversation takes place beneath English photographer Chris Killip’s Watching the Parade, Newcastle West-End (1976), the seminal black-and-white photograph of a small boy seated heroically on a man’s shoulders as the two watch a procession to which the viewer is not privy. The famous image—connoting poverty, voyeurism, and an incipient Thatcherism—dominates the office of Parr’s home, a terraced house in the posh Georgian suburb of Clifton, Bristol, that appears stuffed to the gills even though a great many of its contents have been removed for the “Parrworld” show. Here also is his several-thousand-strong library of photography books, which Parr began in the 1970s with a copy of Robert Frank’s The Americans. He now travels regularly to South America to look for “books that have yet to be discovered.” This desire for rehabilitation applies to the other end of Parr’s collecting spectrum, as evinced in his assemblage of postcards. They span more than a century, revealing how the medium developed from being a means of dispensing local news to delivering familiar tourist “wish you were here”s. Parr allots special attention to the banal—motorways and soulless caravan parks, some made jolly by lurid tinting. It’s not hard to find resonances with Parr’s own work. “I think that my photography is also a form of collecting,” reflects Parr. “It’s a question of looking at things and organizing them into groups, trying to make statements about them.” Thanks to eBay’s transformation of the global garage sale, Parr has also amassed a huge collection of objects that illustrate how photography has been applied to domestic wares and comestibles: see his chip packets endorsed by the Spice Girls and crockery decorated with images of Mrs. Thatcher (former leaders—dictators, especially—are an enduring theme). Regardless of subject matter, all the objects attest to the photographer’s belief that the medium should encompass “both high and low.” To this end, Parr collects like a museum curator rather than a single-minded devotee. Collecting with such range allows him to harness apparent contradictions without comment. In addition to his yen for Thatcher memorabilia, for example, he is passionate about plates and posters that commemorate the 1984–85 miners’ strike, staged when Thatcher’s government tried to shut down unprofitable mines in the north of England. Clearly, Parr is drawn to things that aren’t easily reconciled. Although this might make it hard to get a real sense of the man, it is revealing of the disparate motives driving his photographic work. “I deal in ambiguities,” Parr admits. “It’s what I make a career of.”
“Parrworld” is on view at the Graphic Design Museum, Beyerd Breda, Netherlands, through Jan. 6.
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